SEP 4 IMS 



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BRICKS FROM BABEL: 



A BRIEF VIEW 



MYTHS, TRADITIONS AND RELIGIOUS 
BELIEF OF RACES, 



WITH 



CONCISE STUDIES IN ETHNOGRAPHY. 



JULIA ( McNAIR WRIGHT, 

AUTHOR OF "THE EARLY CHURCH IN BRITAIN," " AMONG THE 
ALASKANS," " THE COMPLETE HOME," ETC. 

" Of them was the whole earth overspread." 

"And by these were the nations divided in the 
earth after the flood." 



NEW YORK: 
JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER. 
1885. 



Copyright, 1885, 

BY 

JOHN B. ALDEN. 



TROW'9 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY, 
NEW YORK. 



PREFACE. 



The following short studies in Ethnog- 
raphy were written chiefly in the British 
Museum. In an age when so much bla- 
tant doubt has assailed the statements of 
the Scripture on all topics in Science or 
Ancient History, it seemed a proper work 
to give a clear and concise view of the 
results reached by various learned ethnol- 
ogists, philologists, and archaeologists, 
and to show that a consensus of the best 
learning and most patient research, ranges 
an ultimatum beside the monumental 
Tenth Chapter of Genesis. The stones 
in the wall have lately lifted up their 
voice against arrant unbelief. Every year, 
we could say every month, inscriptions 
are discovered and deciphered, in Egypt, 
Assyria, Asia Minor, each one confirma- 
tory of the others, and of the Sacred 
Record. I have not desired to make 
this an elaborate or technical work. The 
abundant foot-notes from the best author- 
ities, suffice to guarantee the various 
statements of the text. As the work was 
meant for popular use, for the general 
reader, and not for scientists, the refer- 
ences given have usually been to easily 
attainable works in English, and only a 
very small portion of the abundant notes 
that might have been given from French, 
German and Latin authors have been 



6 



PREFACE. 



used. For the same reason, I have been 
content to remain behind modern style 
in classic spelling. It seemed to me that 
the general reader would more readily 
recognize Cilicia than Kilikia, and so on. 
The entire object in this volume is to 
throw light on many important passages 
in Holy Writ, and to show that the finest 
learning and most recent discoveries have 
not antagonized the Mosaic author, but 
have followed the path he traced. 

J. McNair Wright. 

July, 1885, 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

THE RACE IN ITS CRADLE 9 

CHAPTER II. 

THE FLIGHT 23 

CHAPTER III. 

THE CHALDA1C KINGDOM 37 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE MONUMENTAL LAND 55 

CHAPTER V. 

THE ETHIOPIAN RACES 63 

CHAPTER VI. 

INDIA 74 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE CHILDREN OF GOMER * 93 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE IONIAN LAND I08 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE POLAR RACES ,.,.„ 118 

CHAPTER X. 

MONGOLS AND MALAYS 1 34 

CHAPTER XI, 

THE CHILDREN OF THE NEW WORLD 149 



s 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE REIGN OF THE THREE BROTHERS 165 

APPENDICES. 

I. THE HITTITES 173 

II. THE CELTS 177 

III. THE IBERIANS 1 78 

IV. THE POLYNESIANS 179 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE RACE IN ITS CRADLE. 

" As one who in his journey bates at noon, 
Though bent on speed ; so here the archangel 
paused, 

Betwixt the world destroyed, and world restored." 

Paradise Lost, Book XII. 

" The same day were all the fountains 
of the great deep broken up, and the 
windows of Heaven were opened. And 
the waters prevailed exceedingly upon 
the earth ; and all the high hills that were 
under the whole Heaven, were covered." 
Thus simply does Holy Writ describe 
that tremendous event, which all races of 
men have exhausted their vocabularies in 
endeavoring to depict, and which, while 
it changed the face of nature, and altered 
the current of the history of humanity, 
left also its indelible impress upon the 
hearts of men, and stands at the beginning 
of every known cosmogony. 

The history of the antediluvian world 
begins with the dividing of the waters, 
that the dry land might appear : the his- 
tory of the postdiluvian era begins with 
the meeting of those same waters : the 



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BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



hand that parted them withdrew its re- 
straining power ; the upper floods and 
the lower fountains rushed toward a re- 
union, and the world was drowned : the 
Ark floated desolate on a sea without a 
shore. 

Of the universality of the Flood it is 
not our province to treat. Many scien- 
tific men, scholars, and historians, have 
argued for a partial deluge or a succession 
of partial deluges, which together covered 
the whole surface of the earth. Of the 
teachers thus holding we need only men- 
tion Tayler Lewis, Hugh Miller, Pye 
Smith. In the view of others, purely 
physical science points intelligently to 
such a single, universal flood, as seems to 
be detailed in the Book of Genesis.* 
Under this flood were buried that glori- 
ous garden where God had walked with 
man ; the cherubim-guarded gate ; the 
splendors, the cities, the brilliant inven- 
tions of the sons of Cain ; and all vestiges 
of that lofty line whereof Enoch was the 
exponent. All these had gone, except 
one solitary family, and the traditions 
which they cherished. 

We behold Noah and his sons leaving 
the Ark and standing before the altar of 
burnt offering. The deluge has not al- 
tered the moral character of the race ; be- 
fore Noah began to build the vessel " for 
the saving of his house," the Divine Hand 
had thus drawn the spiritual portrait of 
the sons of men. " Every imagination of 
the thoughts of his heart, was only evil 
continually ; " and when the smoke of 
Noah's sacrifice rose upon the air, the 

* Prichard, Phys. Hist, of Man.; Gill, Com, 
on Gen. ; Kalisch, Krit. Coin. o?i 0. T. et. al. 



THE RACE IN ITS CRADLE. n 



Searcher of Spirits looked down in com- 
passion, saying, " The imagination of 
man's heart is evil from his youth." 

The flood had not destroyed the two 
great antagonistic impulses which Eve 
had divided between her children. On 
either side of the worshipping Noah stood 
the heirs of the spirit of Cain, and of 
Seth : Shem was the repository of the 
Sethite yearnings and devotion, the leader 
of the faithful ; Ham was the champion 
of the world-power, the chief of the suc- 
cessors of the Cainites. 

Between these two stands Japheth, di- 
vided with the desires and ambitions of 
both: one while he kneels at Shem's rude 
altars, his soul crying out to his father's 
God, himself content to be Earth's nomad, 
pilgrim and stranger, exile of the skies ; 
and anon he sees the stately walls of cities 
and palaces yet to be, rivals of those that 
had been overwhelmed in the land of 
Nod ; he hears the clash of arms such as 
Tubal-Cain had forged, and the bray of 
trumpets, such as Jubal had fashioned, 
and all his heart goes out to the inven- 
tions of Ham, and he is emphatically at 
home below. 

From Shem, sprang the Shemites ; the 
spiritual kingdom, conservator of relig- 
ion ; its central object the Christ. This 
was the most centralized race, least wan- 
dering, until its type-line of Judah was 
smitten by an extraordinary judgment of 
unrest. From Ham sprang the Turanian 
race, swift riders, freebooters, great build- 
ers, nomads generally ; but with strong 
exceptions in Egypt and Abyssinia. Ja- 
pheth was the Aryan fount, the excelling, 
city-builders, the most widely diffused 



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race, rilling three quarters of the globe : 
this was the race of civilizers, the race of 
culture as Shem of cultus. 

These three sons of Noah were each to 
have their day of world empire.* 

Ham was to find his turn first ; Babylon 
the magnificent should rise beneath his 
spell, and though the Tower of Babel 
should fall, his Pyramid should endure, 
like the earth it stood upon. 

Shem's day of triumph dawned, when 
" Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom 
of all the children of the East," when 
" King Solomon exceeded all the kings 
of the earth for riches and for wisdom." 

Japheth's hour has at last arrived. 
Since Alexander in his conquests overran 
the world, Japheth has stood at the fore- 
front of progress. The Shemitic inclin- 
ings of his heart have embraced religion 
and upheld the faith , his Hamitic yearn- 
ings have conquered and built up king- 
doms, have invented wonders of skill, 
have made marvellous discoveries, have 
developed art and poetry, music and sci- 
ence. To Japheth it will be reserved to 
bring forth with shouting the cap-stone of 
civilization and culture. 

" These are the three sons of Noah, 
and of them was the whole earth over- 
spread." Here we have a revelation con- 
cerning man's origin. We have, moreover, 
an historical statement, the earliest pre- 
served record of history : those who doubt 
the inspiration, will yet admit the an- 
tiquity and admirable preservation of the 
Books of Moses, and accord them their 
weight as ancient documents. 

* Rawlinson's Five Great Monarchies, Vol. I. 



THE RACE IN ITS CRADLE. 



But if we lay aside the testimony of 
revelation, and while we decide that the 
Book of Genesis, though venerable, is by 
no means coeval with the sons of Noah, — 
as says Humboldt, * " History, as far as it 
is based on human testimony, knows of 
no primitive race, no one primitive seat 
of civilization," — we shall yet find that the 
soundest and most learned philosophers, 
honestly carrying on their investigations 
in history, philology, and physics, all 
arrive by their different methods at the 
same conclusion ; and that a conclusion 
identical with the statement of Scripture. 
This is as when, starting on any portion 
of the tire of a wheel and passing down 
the nearest spoke, all these diverse spokes 
lead to one axle.f Thus, M. Balli and 
Sir William Jones reach their conclusion 
of a common origin for men by studying 
the traditions, the myths, of all known 
races. These myths exist in a remark- 
able similarity among all peoples, except 
a few isolated fragments of humanity, 
who, in adverse circumstances, have lost 
their original light. These common tra- 
ditions point to a common stock, and we 
shall hereafter have occasion to refer to 
them. Linnaeus and Pennant draw this 
same conclusion, from their investigations 
of physical structure, and the ratio and 
method of <the multiplication of species. 

Philological researches have led learned 
students in the same direction, and con- 
ducted them at last to the same goal. 
Some of the primitive tongues are found 
to be most perfect in their earliest stages. 

* Cosmos, Vol. II. Chap. 2. 

t Tayler Lewis, Discourse before the Burling- 
ton Literary Societies. 



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Comparatively a very small number of 
languages were the fountains whence 
other dialects have sprung. The soul of 
these languages is the same. Despite 
assuming theories concerning the gradual 
formation of original speech, the honest 
student of languages finds " in their deep 
philosophy, the logic of their syntax, the 
impression of the supernatural;"* and 
when he discerns in the earliest tongues 
one common soul enclosed in varied bod- 
ies, he cannot deny the conclusion, that 
the supernatural agency which bestowed 
upon men the one primitive tongue sud- 
denly, at some certain epoch, " divided it 
into a number of others, which have been 
subdivided among all the nations of the 
globe." 

Again, students of man's physical 
structure have learned that however in 
some or many minor points men may 
differ, they are yet descendants of one 
sole species.f Each race can trace its 
pedigree as anciently and as honorably as 
every other ; relics all of that creation 
which preceded the Noahic deluge. % 
While a large proportion of people accept 
this belief solely on the authority of the 
Revelation, others obtain it in its entirety 
from researches into the history of organ- 
ized creation. 

Even great names have adorned the 
teaching that each land had its indige- 
nous inhabitants, and that men were not 
of one species. But the philosophers 
who have held thus have been obliged 

* See especially, Prichard's Eastern Origin of 
Celtic Races, Ch. I. 
f Cosmos, Vol. I. 

% Prichard, Physical Hist, of Mankind, Vol. I. 



THE RACE IN ITS CRADLE. 15 



to change their reasonings ten times, 
and still find themselves disproved by 
those who hold that all men sprang from 
one stock, created on the banks of the 
Euphrates and preserved in the Ark. 
Men have spent many years learning and 
proving in diverse ways the truth of what 
that Hebrew sage — most venerable of 
historians — told them so long ago, that 
man's diversities are of one family and 
of one blood ; but these years and inves- 
tigations have been well spent, in unfold- 
ing more and more the marvels of our 
God. 

We proceed now with the record, as- 
sured that mankind are descended, not 
from each land's " Autochthones," but 
from Noah's Three Sons.* 

The next point which obtains our at- 
tention concerns the portion of the earth 
where this Noahic family found them- 
selves when the waters subsided. " And 
the Ark rested on the mountains of 
Ararat." A hasty popular opinion has 
been formed, that the Ark rested on the 
peak now called Ararat, seventeen thou- 
sand feet above the sea. The text, how- 
ever, only suggests some portion of the 
elevated region called Ararat, which in 
ancient times embraced without doubt 
the territory now called Armenia. f 

Various authors, especially those who 
contend for a partial deluge, have fixed 
upon certain localities, — as North Africa, 
Ceylon, Afghanistan, and Asia Minor, — as 
the resting-place of the Ark. Without 
discussing these theories, we shall simply 
gather together the testimonies of those 

* So Adelung, Buffon, Lawrence, Blumenbach. 
t Kitto's Biblical Encyclopedia, Art. Ararat. 



1 6 BRICKS FROM BABEL 

who are undoubtedly the highest author- 
ity on this question, and show that they 
unite in considering Armenia — the slopes 
of the mountains of Ararat — as the cradle 
of the postdiluvian race. 

Josephus, Berosus, Nicolaus of Damas- 
cus, Eusebius, and Jerome,* unite in de- 
claring Armenia the seat of the sons of 
Noah for several centuries after the flood. 

Of modern authors holding this view 
are, among others, Keil, Delitzsch, Kal- 
isch. Sir H. Rawlinson, who maintains 
a chief place among the students of an- 
tiquities, says,f " If we were to be guided 
by the mere intersection of linguistic 
paths, and independently of all Scripture 
record, we should still be led to fix upon 
the plains of Shinar as the focus from 
which the various lines radiated." Baron 
Larrey, a famous French anatomist, says, 
concerning the Syro-Arabian race, who 
occupy the territory between the Egyp- 
tian and Indo-European races, " Upon 
the whole, I am convinced that the cradle 
of the human race is to be found in the 
country of this family." George Rawlin- 
son,^: while he admits that Armenia is. 
" that mountain region where man first 
increased and multiplied after the flood," 
indicates an East African settlement 
prior to the dispersion : he argues this on 
three points which will be hereafter con- 
sidered. Wm. Osburn, esteemed by 
many a prince of Egyptologists, writes of 
Armenia : " A country which the unani- 
mous voice of all ancient authority de- 
clares to have been the cradle of the 

* Jones, Proper Names of 0. T. 

t Bampton Lectures, 1859. 

I Five Great Monarchies, Vol. I. 



THE RACE IN ITS CRADLE. 



whole human race after its destruction by 
the flood." * Josephus tells us, that in 
the first years after the deluge, the family 
of Noah clung to the hill slopes, gradu- 
ally approaching the valleys, and devoting 
themselves chiefly to agriculture. As 
they rapidly grew more and more numer- 
ous they oxtended over the plain. 

The first Biblical account of their move- 
ments is — " And it came to pass as they 
journeyed from the East, they found a 
plain in the land of Shinar." Kalisch 
reads here, " as they journeyed in the 
East/'f Dr. Gill prefers " on the sides of 
the East." Lange's Commentary on this 
verse proposes Southeast. The region of 
Armenia lies to the north and east of 
Shinar. It is probable that the spreading 
families of men slowly took their way 
along the valleys and southern slopes of 
Armenia, which was for them the remot- 
est eastern side of the earth. 

Surrounded by the rapidly multiplying 
thousands of their descendants, the three 
great patriarchs who had held converse 
with the antediluvians were now living in 
the same territory and speaking the same 
tongue. Probably for the three hundred 
and fifty years which Noah lived after the 
flood, the sons of men had only moved so 
far from each other as the support of 
their flocks and herds demanded. Dur- 
ing these centuries, however, the diverse 
characteristics of these brethren had been 
developing themselves. The genius of 
the Hamites was incompatible with the 
genius of the Shemites. 

It is highly probable that the first 

* Antiquities of Egypt. 
t Crit. Com. on O. T. 



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break in the human band was occasioned 
by the separation of Shem from the fami- 
lies of his brethren and his passing over 
to Arrapachitis in Northern Assyria.* 
Smith f objects to this view, and desires 
to place " Ur of the Chaldees " to the 
South of Babylon at Mugeyer ; but, as 
says Kalisch, after the absolute identifica- 
tion of Haran, " the true position of Urof 
the Chaldees to the northwest of Baby- 
lon cannot be doubtful.";}; "Ur" was 
evidently applied to the region as well as 
a particular town in that region. Passing 
therefore directly eastward from Armenia 
— probably on an almost straight line 
from the spot where, coming from the 
Ark, Noah had made his home — Shem, 
the chief of the Theocratic line, set up his 
household altar. 

At the time when Moses wrote, " Chal- 
dees " referred to a nation mixed of sev- 
eral — at least four — different peoples, 
who extended through the greater part of 
Mesopotamia. Rawlinson derives their 
name from a Burbur term meaning 
u Moon-worshippers."§ Shem, with the 
greater part of his family, withdrew, 
therefore, to the north of Ur. While Ar- 
phaxad, the son of Shem, upon whom the 
birthright descended, was certainly with 
him in his new home, the course of the 
history leads us to infer that Asshur, and 
others of his sons, remained at the first 
home in Armenia. 

The immense length of the life-period 

* Lange, Com. on Gen. 

+ Smith's Bible Dictionary ; and Clark's Bible 
Atlas. 

% Crit. Com. 011 Gen. 

§ Five Great Monarchies, Vol. I. 



THE RACE IN ITS CRADLE. 19 

has here to be taken into consideration. 
Shem had held converse with the pre- 
diluvian sons of God. For two hundred 
and forty-three years of Methuselah's 
life, Adam had lived upon the earth ; 
Methuselah lived until Shem was one 
hundred years old. This hundred years 
was the period of the building of the Ark, 
wherein Shem was to be saved. Can we 
doubt but that in that last century of 
" the world that then was " Methuselah 
had poured its wondrous records, again 
and again, into the ready ear of the godly 
Shem ? For fifty years Shem was contem- 
porary with Jacob.* This gives us a view 
of the generations which in the Babel pe- 
riod were co-existing upon the earth. 
While Shem and his children down to Pe- 
leg were living in Ur, the four sons of 
Ham, in the vigor of their might and 
pride and building genius, prepared to 
lead the advance of earth's great migra- 
tions. 

Shem having divided himself from his 
brethren, probably at the command of 
God,f the remaining sons of men found 
Armenia too narrow for them, and pass- 
ing down the sides of the East, came to 
the broad plain of the Euphrates — the 
land of Shinar. It was a land to suit 
them all : to the half-shepherd sons of Ja- 
pheth, the Shemitic shepherds of Asshur's 
line, it offered the advantage of being the 
most marvellously fruitful spot on the 
face of the globe, the earth bringing forth 
three hundred fold ; % while to the city- 
building Hamites it afforded unlimited 

* See Rawlinson's Bampto?i Lectures. 

t Josephus, Antiquities of Jews. 

\ Herodotus i. 193 ; Theophrast. 8. 7. 



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quantities of clay, easily to be wrought 
into durable bricks.* 

The leading character who stands be- 
fore us in this movement is Nimrod, the 
the son of Cush, the son of Ham. Nim- 
rod was a mighty hunter. In the earliest 
stages of all nations, the great hunter is 
emphatically the great man. In later pe- 
riods of history men may have their vari- 
ous standards of greatness. The warrior, 
the statesman, the scholar, the orator, the 
divine, the inventor, even the athlete, 
have their path open to greatness. When 
a rude earth is to be subdued, when man 
has first and foremost to fight with wild 
beasts for his rightful dominion, then the 
great hunter will take the lead of all his 
compatriots. So in the first myths of all 
nations we generally find some mighty 
hunter. We are told that this Nimrod 
was a mighty hunter (before) against the 
Lord.f He used his supremacy to lead 
men away from the worship of Jehovah, 
and into acts defiant of his will. 

The indications of Divine Providence 
were for the scattering abroad of men 
to people the whole earth. Nimrod's 
plan was for a great central monarchy, at 
whose head himself should stand. While 
the three sons of Noah were yet in the 
meridian of their years among men, this 
their descendant in the second genera- 
tion rose up at the head of the race, and 
so impressed himself upon the children of 
earth, that he moulded them to his will, 
and his very name became a proverb, 
even until Moses's day. 

The central thought of Nimrod — to 

* Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies. 
t See Lange's Com. 071 Gen. 



THE RACE IN ITS C RAD IE. 21 



which all his comrades agreed — was to 
build a city and a tower in Lower Meso- 
potamia, beside the Euphrates. Spread 
over the Shinar plain, the sons of men 
united in this work ; one family alone re- 
mained solitary — the family of Shem and 
Arphaxad. They, withdrawn to Ur, pur- 
sued the quiet tenor of shepherd life, 
while their kindred, an eager and busy 
host, raised on the Babylonian plain their 
haughty challenge against the skies. 

Nimrod had called all the children of 
men to aid his undertaking. When the 
work was mightily progressing there came 
an uninvited guest to Shinar : the Lord 
passed through the plain " to see the city 
and the tower." 

There are various old traditions that 
fierce winds and poured-forth lightnings 
conspired to destroy the upper portion of 
Nimrod's famous pile. This is a matter 
of very small importance. The passing 
of the Lord through the camp of the sons 
of men produced much more tremendous 
results than the fall of all, or any part of 
this building. 

He who, when He had breathed into 
man's nostrils the breath of His own di- 
vine life, which made him immortal, had 
also given him speech as his dower from 
heaven,* now, by a like sovereign interpo- 
sition, did not take away language, but 
taking the gift into his hand divided the 
one common tongue into several, and be- 
stowed the diverse portions upon the 
families of earth. \ Each family's speech 
was strange to the ears of other tribes. 

* Tayler Lewis, Discourse before the Burlington 
Literary Societies. 
Mbid. 



22 BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



Perhaps in losing the original tongue 
men were not conscious of their own loss 
or their own change, but sensible of that 
of others. It was the age of supernatural 
events : man had been created where man 
had not been before ; a world had been 
drowned, and had re-emerged from the 
waters. Now the glorious gift of speech, 
hitherto the bond between men, became 
the line of their division.* A great ter- 
ror filled their souls ; they were con- 
founded ; " they left off to build the 
city." 

But with this mighty change of tongues 
a new element entered into the heart of 
man ; a new impulse came into him, and 
overmastered him. It was an impulse 
hitherto unknown, planted in the souls of 
men when God had passed through the 
Shinar plain — the IMPULSE OF MIGRA- 
TION. 

The chronology of Ussherhas generally 
been accepted as correct. Some claim 
that it must be incorrect and indicates far 
too short a time for man to do all that 
man has done. It might, however, be 
easier to believe that in four thousand 
years man has peopled and cultivated the 
globe, than that the " Calaveras skull " 
and the "cave bones " in France, and 
" seeds and utensils in Swiss lakes," have 
existed, without artificial protection, de- 
fiant of natural decomposition, for ten or 
twenty thousand years. 

* See Prichard, Eastern Origin of Celtic Race. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE FLIGHT. 

''Make bright the arrows and gather the shields, 
Set the standard of God on high : 
Swarm we like locusts over all earth's fields.'' 

The busy toil of the builders ceased 
at Babylon. The mighty host which 
swarmed over that fertile plain divided, 
each company under its own standard. 
The division of languages was evidently 
according to affinities of blood ; diverse 
dialects were developed suddenly in the 
same families. Thus Ham found his 
four sons at the head of four diverse na- 
tionalities, as speech made nations; and 
the grandson, Nimrod, and other grand- 
sons, surrounded each by clans, with dif- 
fering linguistic peculiarities. And yet 
there was an affinity between the speech 
of the Hamites or Turanians, an affinity 
which caused them to move in the same 
general line across the globe, to keep 
together for a time, and to disperse slowly ; 
and yet, there was a difference as great, 
and as potent, as the affinity ; a difference 
which divided them into tribes settling 
apart from each other, and building up 
each their own body politic. 

If we may be guided in our judgment 
by the later developments of history and 
philology, a far wider line of demarcation 
separated these from the Japhethic or 
Aryan race. Between Ham's and Ja- 



24 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



pheth's line, not merely new pronuncia- 
tion and partial alterations hads prung up 
at Babel, but absolutely " new tongues 
with distinct radicals and peculiar gram- 
matical structures,"* and while Japheth 
had among his own posterity such affinities 
and diversities as were recognized among 
the Turanians, he was more completely 
separated from his brethren, and his fu- 
ture in the earth lay far apart from theirs. 

Indeed, if we may trust to the indica- 
tions afforded us by the currents of mi- 
gration, the Aryan line had varieties 
within itself far greater than existed 
among the Hamites ; varieties that were to 
mould its future. Exceeding his brothers 
in the number of his sons, in the extent 
of territory which he was to occupy, 
and the period of time during which he 
was to be dominant in the world, Japheth 
was driven at the very beginning of mi- 
grations to divide his hosts widely asun- 
der. On the contrary, the descendants 
of Shem were to be less widely divided, 
and while split into fewer nationalities, 
we find there was a marked and lasting 
difference between these in speech, 
method of thought, social and political 
life, and in religious ideas. 

Concerning the original language 
spoken on the Shinar plain there have 
been great diversities of opinion. The 
Hebrews held that as the family of Ar- 
phaxad had taken no part in the Babel 
building they were exempt from the 
Babel curse of change, and that the He- 
brew was the original Adamic or Noahic 
tongue. To this many modern theologians 

* T. Lewis, Discourse on Nat. Religion and 
Primitive Revelation. 



THE FLIGHT. 



25 



and philologists have agreed : * others 
have maintained that Syriac was the orig- 
inal language.f The Sanscrit has also had 
its supporters.;): Some have believed 
that the original tongue was entirely al- 
tered at Babel, or gradually destroyed by 
a mixing with other dialects.g This is 
evidently a point which can never be set- 
tled, and certainty upon which would 
produce no greatly useful results. Of 
the fact of the Babel confusion, not only 
inspired history, but all ancient traditions 
and all philology bear witness. Says Bun- 
sen, J " Comparative philology would have 
been compelled to set forth as a postu- 
late the supposition of some such division 
of language in Asia, especially on the 
ground of the relation of the Egyptian 
language to the Shemitic, even if the 
Bible had not assured us of the truth of 
this astounding event. It is truly aston- 
ishing that something so purely historical, 
something so conformable to reason is 
here related to us out of the earliest 
primeval period." 

Concerning the similarity in some of 
these early tongues, we note that Abra- 
ham is mentioned as holding intimate 
converse with the Aramaeans at Ur, with 
Pharaoh in Egypt, with the Canaanites 
in Palestine, and with Melchisedeck, a 
Turanian or Canaanite. The Egyptians, 
on their oldest sculptures, depict inter- 
course with the Ethiopians, particu- 

* Baumgarten, The Synagogue Writers ; Von 
Gerlach. 
t Delitzsch. 

X Kalisch, Crit. Com. on Gen.; Grubers E?icy. 
§ Keil. 

I See Lange, Com. on Gen. 



26 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



larly in matters of worship ; and we can 
trace the rapid diverging of these lan- 
guages each from each in the progress of 
time, in the fact that while Abraham 
seems to have needed no interpreter in 
Egypt, Jacob's twelve sons did need one, 
and could not understand their brother, 
speaking in the Egyptian tongue. 

Concerning the Adamic language, we 
have to infer that it was long before the 
flood a written tongue. Ignorant of writ- 
ing, man soon becomes a savage. No civ- 
ilized race has ever existed without writ- 
ing ; man, as he was taught speech by 
God, was doubtless by Him instructed in 
written characters for that speech. The 
oldest Chaldean tradition asserts that 
Noah before the flood gathered and 
buried the written history of the ante- 
diluvian race. 

Another circumstance greatly strength- 
ens the probability of the divine gift of a 
written tongue. Though widely* dif- 
fused, writing is an art which, once lost, 
man never of himself recovers. No tribe 
of savages with which in modern times 
we have become acquainted has accom- 
plished this." " The beautifully ingen- 
ious principle upon which the phonetic or 
alphabetic system of the Egyptians was 
constructed, did not originate in Egypt ; 
the same principle is distinctly percepti- 
ble in the alphabets of the race of Shem. 
The ancient alphabets in use among the 
Hebrews, and those peoples allied to them, 
were all constructed on the same princi- 
ple."f 

We may therefore consider that the 

* Osburn, Antiquities of Egypt. 
t Ibid. 



THE FLIGHT, 



27 



flying tribes of men took from the Shinar 
cradle of their race, their language, 
changed, yet sufficient for their needs, 
and to be by them developed and im- 
proved ; and in this development and im- 
provement to diverge more and more from 
other tongues ; and each to find new dia- 
lects forced by circumstances out of itself. 
Also they carried their idea of written 
language, which would now be altered 
from the original written character to 
suit the exigencies of the new speech of 
which it was to be a vehicle. Again we 
shall consider that in this breaking up of 
the primitive speech, some nations and 
tribes received much more abundant and 
perfect language than others, according 
to their capacities, and to the part which 
God designed them to enact in the future 
history of men. 

Many a primitive speech has died out 
or been absorbed — as that of the Etruscan 
tribes which wandered through Middle 
Europe, and were subsequently buried 
under a new rush of migration. The 
American Indians, with their perishing 
dialects, had never such a glorious stream 
of speech as the Sanskrit — fountain, we 
were ready to say, of an hundred tongues ; 
as the Hebrew, and the Greek. But here 
one cannot do better than to quote Tay- 
ler Lewis on these two latter languages : * 

* Discourse on Nat. Religion and Primitive 
Revelation. 

" The Hebrew was intended by the creating 
Word for the solemn announcement of the attri- 
butes of God and the penal sanctions of his law ; 
and for this purpose it required strength and 
majesty, rather than copiousness and flexibility. 
It was the language of a secluded people, and was 
designed to keep them so. The speech of the sons 



28 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



Add to this, the early perfection of the 
Sanskrit, and consider how the languages 
which are the heirs of that tongue are to- 
day busy in all provinces of literature, 
philosophy and science, moulding and 
completing the work and history of the 
world, and the Divine plan and prevision 
in the epoch of dispersion rises clearly 
upon the mind. 

The tribes of men were not only to 
carry with them in their dispersion lan- 
guage of diverse kinds, and to some ex- 
tent written language, but they were to 
take also the baleful germs of a variety of 
false religions. Already the human heart 
had begun to find material symbols for 
God, and to worship created things. Bel- 
worships, sun-worships, were inaugurated 
at Shinar. " The history of the tower- 
building is the history of the origin of 
heathenism."* 

The false worship here begun by Nim- 
rod, was a monotheism. The religions 
which were carried away from Babel were 
monotheistic. All cosmogonies go back 
to the one creative God, and he is sym- 
bolized generally by the sun in heaven. 
We find the first step in Polytheism is the 
idea of a feminine parallel to this great 

of Javan was intended in a special manner for 
the language of philosophy and a philosophical 
race, a race which should have an extensive inter- 
course with the rest of mankind and exert a con- 
trolling influence on their intellectual -history. It 
was intended, in the subsequent union of these 
two streams, for the language of the everlasting 
gospel, for the medium of the more perfect devel- 
opment of the philosophy of Heaven, and of those 
sublime truths which no other tongues could so 
clearly convey." 
* Fabri. 



THE FLIGHT. 



29 



God, the worship of the earth, reproduct- 
ive power. This fact of the early mon- 
otheism, we may take to be a proof that 
man did not develop into a religious be- 
ing ; religion was given in its purity to 
the first man by his Creator. Natural re- 
ligion, while it suggests God, says nothing 
to man's heart of one God, and as the light 
of the revelation is lost, man finds Gods 
regnant over all the diverse elements and 
operations of nature. The only religion 
which has remained monotheistic is that 
one which from the days of Moses has 
held the written word as its rule. The 
moment sects begin to depart from this 
word, they verge on polytheism. The 
monstrous horrors of the Pantheon, cre- 
ated by man astray from God, and in- 
creased by him at every further step he 
makes from the original divinely-delivered 
monotheism, prove that man is, left to 
himself, a deteriorating animal ; he appre- 
ciates only in the ratio of his acceptance 
of a revelation. 

And now we see humanity supernatu- 
rally disturbed on the Shinar plain ; man's 
original speech confounded, and his early 
obstinate cleaving near the spot where he 
first found himself, exchanged for a deep 
unrest, a migrative impulse, which should 
never be exhausted, until the world's 
latest day, and which should occasion the 
first peopling of all parts of the earth, and 
the future re-discovery of forgotten por- 
tions of the globe. 

And here it is very curious to notice, 
that the race which at Babel received the 
greatest access of this principle, and was 
driven most widely asunder in its first 
migration, was that Japhetic, Aryan race, 



3P 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



which to this day furnishes the explor- 
ers, geographers, and discoverers of new 
means of locomotion, for the world ; also, 
that this Japhetic race, on whom at Shi- 
nar the very fulness of confusion seemed 
poured out in the broad diversity of its 
languages, has produced that English 
tongue, spoken in all parts of the world, 
easily and readily learned by all foreign- 
ers, which seems likely at last, in God's 
good time, to remove the keenest bitter- 
ness of the Babel curse, and make speech 
once more the link, and not the barrier, 
between races.* 

A simple table will now show us the 
principal leaders and standards prepared 
on the Babel-plain for flight. 

The reader of the genealogical table in 
the tenth chapter of Genesis will notice 
in the 18th and 25th verses that the pe- 
riod of migration is expressly noticed.f 
Thus in the line of Canaan, Ham's young- 
est son, after enumerating eleven fami- 
lies of his house, the statement comes — 
" and afterwards were the families of the 
Canaanites spread abroad." This sug- 
gests to us the numerical strength of that 
host which fled with Canaan from Shinar. 
So in the line of Shem, at Peleg, the 
fourth generation from Shem, is the rec- 
ord, " In his days was the earth divided : 
and his brother's name was Joktan." Now 
while Peleg remained at Arrapachitis, and 
carried on the birthright line, Joktan 
was of the migrating people, took his way 
southwards, and from him came a great 
Arabian race. 

* Keil, On Gen.; Tayler Lewis, in Langes Com. 
Note on Gen. 

t Osburn's Afitiqiiities of Egypt. 



THE FLIGHT. 



3* 



The Toldoth Beni Noah is no mere 
personal list of names, no narrow family 
tree, but it is the grand original ethno- 
graphic chart, the genealogy of the people 
of a world. It is the pioneer of geograph- 
ical, statistical and philological essays, 
and to its conclusions all later savants are 
forced to return, as the highest summary 
of their discoveries. When Bunsen wrote 
his Philosophy of History, and M filler his 
Survey of Languages, and numberless 
other students elaborated profound works 
on kindred subjects, they were all merely 
following, far off, in the footsteps of him 
who wrote the tenthc hapter of Genesis — • 
the Toldoth Beni Noah. 

It will be seen here that the line of 
some of the sons is not carried out. We 
can infer the multitude of all the families, 
from the number of those stated : and it 
is worth while to observe that the line is 
carried out for several generations — 1st, 
of those families who by their connection 
with the Hebrew people should often ap- 
pear in Holy Writ, and 2d, of those 
families who were destined (as Gomer 
and Javan) to exercise a ruling power in 
the progress of the world's history. Shem 
is considered Noah's first born,* Ham his 
youngest son. These, then, were the 
three great races among whom the whole 
earth was now to be divided, each im- 
pelled by supernatural power, to move 
toward that quarter of the globe especially 
designed by God, for the increase and 
possession of his house. 

Many people hastily dispose of the 
whole matter thus: Shem gets Asia; 

* Rawlinson, Toldoth Beni Noah, Ch. VI. ; 
Lange, Com. on Gen. 



3^ 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



^ ° O 
_ i — , cn 

"fa 
if? 













mi 




















e 




'3 


il 








u 





Japheth, Europe ; Ham, Africa. Shem's 
descendants are the brown or yellow 
races; Japheth's the white; and Ham's 



THE FLIGHT. 



33 



the black. An easy way of settling mat- 
ters ; but as far almost as possible from 
the truth. 

We shall find Shem in Asia, Europe, 
and Africa ; Ham in Africa and Asia ; 
Japheth in Europe, America, and Asia ; 
and perchance little colonies of each, pro- 
gressing beyond these limits. We must 
also find the heir or heirs of the Ameri- 
cas, and the Islands. 

As for color, while it is the most evi- 
dent, it is the least accurate guide in 
dividing races.* We shall find, for in- 
stance, in the Japhetic family shades vary- 
ing from alabaster fairness to almost 
blackness. In the Shemitic line color 
will vary from the white, supposed to be 
the hue of Japheth, to a darker shade 
than that of some Hamites ; while among 
the race of Ham we shall find red, brown, 
yellow, and jet black, f And yet in addi- 
tion to a general resemblance of com- 
plexion in the three great races, we shall 
find in each peculiarities of physical struct- 
ure : man appears before us in all his 
varieties, having the common character- 
istics of one species, descended from one 
man ; having differences denoting a 
branching of the one man's family into 
three great races. 

Here we touch the borders of a wonder- 
ful study. "The proper study of man- 
kind is man," says the poet. " Men," 
cries Augustine, " wonder at the height 
of mountains, the waves of the sea ; the 
mighty flowing of rivers, the cycles of the 

* See Pritchard, Natural History of Man. ; 
also, Hall, Analy. Syn., prefixed to Pickering's 
Races of Men, • 

t Pritchard, Nat. Hist, of Man. 
3 



34 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



stars — and yet they fail to wonder at 
themselves ! " 

It may not be amiss briefly to impress 
on the mind the varieties of color in the 
same race, as it particularly belongs to 
our consideration of migrations. How 
few hours of travel lie between the North- 
German stock and the children of Italy 
and Spain. The Fraulein's cheeks, like 
the northern snows, are tinted with the 
palest aurora ray ; her eyes have a blue 
even paler than her skies ; her hair seems 
woven rather of the moonbeams than of 
the sunlight. You find the Spanish and 
Sicilian maidens, with complexions of 
dark-brown olive flushed with carmine ; 
on their hair is a burnished blackness ; a 
starry midnight is in their eyes. We no- 
ticed lately side by side the two extremes 
of the Japhetic race ; little lads, the one 
with features clear cut and white, as if 
chiselled out of marble, the least possible 
gold in his hair, blue in his eye, pink on 
his cheek; the other, round-faced, full 
rounded features, skin dark as a mulatto, 
lips ruddiest crimson, eyes and hair shin- 
ing black — not only both sons of Japheth 
but of the same family out of Japheth — 
the German and the Brahmin. 

Such is the motley concourse, — many- 
tongued, many-hued, of various grades of 
genius, various endowments of language, 
various natural inclinings in faith — who 
after the sweeping of the Lord through 
the Shinar plain, gathered their clans in 
hot haste to fly to the ends of the earth. 

Nimrod, entrenched in his tower, clung 
by the altar he had erected : Asshur, the 
son of Shem, fled northward toward his 
father's hearth, but tarried when he found 



THE FLIGHT. 



35 



the broad savanna where Nineveh was 
to rival Babylon. As Shem was living, 
so doubtless was Ham, and he perhaps 
followed the majority of his descendants, 
and went with Cush. Cush, marshalling 
his hosts, set forth to the southwest. 
Ham, travelling under the banners of his 
eldest son, began to divide his forces. 
We see him leaving his youngest born, 
Canaan, in the Jordan plain, and along 
the sea-coast. He crossed the Isthmus 
of Suez,* and the world's future granary. 
The Nile valley, and the lower region of 
the Delta, with its clay for bricks, its dry 
preservative air, its extraordinary facili- 
ties for building, lured Mizraim, the second 
son of Ham, and he stayed his march, 
furled his banners, spread out his camp in 
the land forever to be famous, and suf- 
fered the myriads of his father's house to 
pass on without him. The first strong 
impulse in the heart of Cush did not ex- 
haust itself until he had reached Ethio- 
pia — the land of fiery heats, of marvel- 
lous monsters, of mysteries inexplicable 
for ages ; here he established his king- 
dom, and henceforth the whole land of 
Africa has been crossed and recrossed by 
the footsteps of his sons. 

Joktan, with his thirteen tribes, left 
Babel by the south. His march was 
shorter than that of Cush. The sea 
washed on three sides the dominion which 
he chose for himself. His were the hills 
of myrrh and frankincense, the forests 
dropping balm, the desert with its camels 
and its caravans: Arabia, a gleam of 
dear romance rests forever on the name ! 

Javan fled northwesterly ; the divine im- 

* Osburn, Antiquities of Egypt. 



30 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



pulse drove him on beyond the confines 
of Asia, across the seas. His were to be 
•f the grandeur that was Greece, and the 
glory that was Rome." Other sons of 
Japheth went North, and far East, and 
Northwest. Aram, the youngest son of 
Shem, sought Asiatic Turkey. 

We shall follow at leisure the diverse 
lines. They were gone ; Nimrod and his 
citizens remained within their walls, 
stunned by the blow which had overtaken 
them ; and sullen silence brooded over all 
the Babylonian plain. 



CHAPTER IIL 



THE CHALDAIC KINGDOM. 

" Woe ! woe ! the time of thy visitation 

Is come, proud Land, thy doom is cast — 
And the black surge of desolation 
Sweeps over thy guilty head at last ! 

War, war, war against Babylon ! " 

We have now reached three propo- 
sitions concerning - ancient Babylonia: 
First, its founding by Nimrod ; second, its 
Cushite, i.e. Hamitic, people ; third, that 
the tide of migration was from Babylon ; 
that Babylon was the. fountain whence 
those early streams of emigrants poured 
forth to people the world. 

As to our first proposition, we find that 
it has been popular with a certain class 
of critics to deny the real existence of 
Nimrod. He is called a myth. It is as- 
serted that the Toldoth Beni Noah, deal- 
ing with real people, and the origin of 
races, has turned aside to give the geneal- 
ogy of a fabulous personage, and to re- 
late the achievements and explain the 
moral character of some one who never 
existed ! But these are people not to be 
confuted out of Holy Writ, they demand 
the assertions and proofs of learned men, 
instead of the wisdom of God. We seek 
these proofs therefore : says Kalisch :* — 

" We see no reason to question the real existence 
of Nimrod. It is much more plausible to suppose 
that the aggregate deeds of a whole nation were 
transferred to him alone, and that the fame as- 



* Com. on Gen. 



38 BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



signed to him on earth was glorified in Heaven by 
naming the constellation [of Orion] after him, than 
that a purely astrological speculation should give 
rise to the fiction of King Nimrod, and a fabulous 
embellishment of his history. The former is a nat- 
ural process, the latter is contrary to all analogy." 

It was one of the latest assertions of 
the learned George Smith, that his most 
careful investigations in Chaldaic remains, 
and studies of ancient history, compelled 
him to consider the Nimrod of the Bible 
entirely as an historical personage.* 

The second objection, i.e. to the Cushite 
descent of the Babylonians, has been 
most violently maintained by Baron Bun- 
sen. As on other occasions the renowned 
German was over-hasty with his contra- 
dictions of Scripture, and later researches 
have refuted his positions. Said Bun- 
sen :f " The Bible mentions but one Cush, 
Ethiopia ; an Asiatic Cush exists only in 
the imaginations of the interpreters, and is 
the child of their despair. Now Nimrod 
was no more a Cushite by blood than Ca- 
naan was an Egyptian." Four years af- 
ter Bunsen had thus boldly proclaimed 
his conviction, Sir Henry Rawlinson, hav- 
ing obtained a number of Babylonian 
documents, more ancient than any previ- 
ously discovered, " was able to declare au- 
thoritatively that the early races of South- 
ern Babylonia were of a cognate race with 
the primitive colonists of African Ethi- 
opia."^: " He therefore adopted the term 
Cushite, as the only proper title to distin- 

* This decision of Mr. Smith we received from 
Mr. Turpin, one of the librarians of the British Mu- 
seum, a gentleman interested on themes such as 
we are now treating. 

| Philosophy of Universal History. 

\Bampton Lectures, 1859; Lect. II. 



THE CHALDAIC KINGDOM. 39 



guish the earlier from the later Babyloni- 
ans ; and re-established beyond all doubt 
or question, the fact of an Asiatic Ethio- 
pia."* 

With more caution, Max Miiller 
adopted the same idea as Bunsen, and 
various Encyclopaedias and general histo- 
ries continue to diffuse it : these make a 
grand flourish about languages and the 
testimony of philology, but again they 
speak too soon, they draw their argument 
from the later Chaldee, after it had under- 
gone an entire change,f and had been 
transfused with the Assyrian, which was 
Shemitic ; but the earliest records now 
are in hand, and come out " decidedly 
Cushite, or Ethiopian. "J 

Niebuhr held this erroneous opinion, — 
rejecting the Cushite descent of the Baby- 
lonians, because he believed them to be 
Assyrians and therefore Shemites. Raw- 
linson has triumphantly disproved this, 
and concludes his arguments saying, 
" The grounds upon which the supposed 
Semitic character of the ancient Chal- 
deans are based fail one and all. " § 

The objection to regarding Babel as the 
primary centre of migration, has come 
from Rawlinson himself. While he ad- 
mits that many good reasons may be ad- 
duced in support of the hypothesis that 
the Shinar plain was the original centre, 
he judges that the Biblical account leads 
us to infer that the Hamites had settled 
in Africa before the Babel building, part 

* Bampton Lectures, 1859; Lect. II. ; also Jour- 
nal of the Asiatic Society, Vol. XV. 
t Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies, Vol. I. 
% Ibid. 
\Ibid. 



40 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



of them had gone thence to Egypt, Ara- 
bia and Shinar, and then the historic pe- 
riod opens with the Tower.* His three 
reasons for this seem to contain far less 
than his usual acuteness. "Africa was 
emphatically the land of Ham." Very 
true ; and there is nothing against the 
plain inference that Ham, being in the 
prime of his years at the dispersion, made 
Africa his by taking possession of it in 
his migration, sent thither by the Divine 
propulsion. " The antiquity of civiliza- 
tion in the Nile valley far preceded that 
at Babylon," says Rawlinson. This also 
does not militate against the coming of 
Mizraim from Babylon. The Egyptians 
were the great builders of antiquity. If 
they carried from Babel Babel's chief 
building genius, and executive ability, we 
may suppose that the Egyptians in their 
empire soon surpassed their Babylonian 
brothers. Their difference in date was 
trifling ; the difference in the genius of the 
people was everything. Of Nimrod we 
learn that he was " a mighty hunter," a 
leader among men ; not that he was a 
great architect. Of Mizraim we learn — ■ 
by the Pyramids. 

Lastly, Rawlinson maintains his singu- 
lar theory from the fact that Nimrod was 
the descendant of Cush, and therefore he 
infers that Nimrod — not Cush — must have 
migrated. But do we not so late as the 
days of Abraham find Terah becoming a 
wanderer from the land of his nativity, 
while Nahor, his son, remains behind in 
the homestead at Ur ? The impulse in 
the breast of Terah did not carry him so 
far as Cush was carried. It was feebler, 
* Five Great Monarchies, Vol. I. 



THE CHALDAIC KINGDOM. 41 

and passed on to the stronger man — Abra- 
ham. Terah was also older relatively 
than Cush, and he had the grave of Ha- 
ran to detain his heart. After all this ar- 
gument in the Five Great Monarchies, 
Rawlinson, in a later work,* seems to 
abandon this position, for we find in it no 
suggestion contrary to the commonly re- 
ceived opinion. 

The Bible mentions four great cities in 
the land of Shinar, as built by Nimrod. 
These have all been identified. f 

At Babylon, Bel-worship was first inau- 
gurated : they early became Moon-wor- 
shippers also. The kingdom was of 
slower growth than Egypt, but attained 
a very stately magnificence. Its people 
were a mixed race, and its language was 
several times materially altered. They 
were, as says Habakkuk, " a bitter and 
hasty nation." They were also a learned 
nation. The Chaldean Magi led the world 
in knowledge and profound researches. 
Under Nebuchadnezzar Babylon became 
the "beauty of the Chaldees' excellency," 
and the " glory of kingdoms." At that 
day Babylonia — doomed soon to an irre- 
parable fall, and an oblivion unbroken for 
long centuries — was to the world, a " head 
of gold." Agriculture, war, the arts and 
sciences, early and equally flourished on 
the plains of Chaldea. Engraved signets 
and written cylinders, and long inscrip- 
tions on bricks and walls, carry us back to 
very early times. They themselves knew 
no period when these marks of civiliza- 
tion had not been among them. Their 

* Historical Illustrations of the Old Testament. 
t Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies. 



42 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



legend was that Oannes,* long before the 
flood, instructed the Chaldeans in arts and 
sciences, " so that no grand discovery was 
ever made afterwards." 

Modern wiseacres will tell us of long 
periods when the race was rising from 
barbarism. They esteem the men that 
lived before the Flood as half savage. 
They reject the teaching that God, mak- 
ing man upright, gave him full possession 
of language, and a knowledge of written 
characters, and that the antediluv^ms 
were men — as became their long life-pe- 
riod — of prodigious mental attainments. 
The ancients were wiser. They knew 
that Wisdom had no human generation, 
no long babyhood. They taught that 
Wisdom — goddess full-armed, in celestial 
panoply — sprung from the head of the 
king of gods, to the marvel of the hosts 
of Heaven. 

At the head of the Babylonian cosmo- 
gony stands not the Flood, but Creation. 
Their account bears wonderful resem- 
blance to the Scripture story. Darkness, 
chaos, and water reigned ; a man was 
created named Alorus. This man was 
produced from the blood [the life ?] of 
Belus, and the dust of the earth. Oannes 
[Enoch ?] taught people many arts ; at 
last after ten generations men were so 
wicked that God determined to destroy 
them. In this period men had lived to 
immense age. One just man was to es- 
cape destruction. His name was Xisu- 
thurus, and he was told to build a floating 
house. He buried at Sippara the records 
of the first race. Xisuthurus entered 
into his ark, and the flood came. When 
* Berosus. 



THE CHALDAIC KINGDOM. 



it ceased Xisuthurus let loose some birds 
who came not again. Waiting some days 
he sent out a bird who returned muddy : 
the third time the bird stayed away, and 
lo, the Ark had grounded on a mountain. 

The earth was still of one tongue when 
men, despising the gods, built a great 
tower. When the tower was now near 
to heaven God by a mighty wind over- 
threw it, and made men speak diverse 
tongues, wherefore the name of the city 
was called Babylon.* 

It is peculiarly noteworthy that while 
the Scriptural history broadly includes 
the world — the deluge of a world, the 
genealogy of a world, the advance of 
a world — the Babylonian tradition speaks 
only of Babylonian antediluvian learn- 
ing, a Babylonian Flood, a Babylonian 
Confusion. These early kingdoms had 
all the glorious selfishness of young chil- 
dren, who think the world was made when 
they were, and made for them ! 

The Chaldean religious system bears a 
marvellous resemblance to the Classical 
Mythology; this resemblance is too close 
to spring from accident, it has led investi- 
gators to conclude that the earliest Greeks 
received the foundation of their religious 
ideas at Babylon. Nimrod was early 
deified and adored as Bel-Nimrod. The 
primal god was II, or Ra: Ra being his 
Cushite, // his Semitic name, and // being 
identical with El, the root of the Bibli- 
cal Elohim. From the worship of this 
one God the Babylonians early strayed. 
From him, as the fount of deity, rose 
other gods, and with their multiplication 

* Niebuhr, Lect. on Anc. Hist. Lect. III. ; Raw- 
linson, Five Great Monarchies, Ch. VII. 



44 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



the idea of purity in the godhead fled, 
and divinities were men, intensified in 
vice and cruelty. 

This little work being designed not to 
trace the history but the origin of races, 
we pass now to that upper kingdom in 
the Euphrates plain — Assyria, with Nin- 
eveh as its head. 

In this chapter on the Chaldaic races 
we shall include a glance at those peoples 
who occupied that part of the world 
which at the time of Nebuchadnezzar 
passed under the Babylonian sceptre," 
and in addition to these will give a brief 
glance at the Arabians. These races, as 
we shall find, were parts of the three great 
families which peopled the world. We 
note them first, as remaining nearest the 
fountain head of migration. 

In the eleventh verse of the tenth chap- 
ter of Genesis occurs such a note of the 
dispersion as we have considered in the 
eighteenth and twenty-fifth verses. Hav- 
ing spoken of Babel, the author turns 
aside to the migration, saying — " Out of 
that land went forth Asshur and builded 
Nineveh, etc." Lange translates here, 
" Out of that land he [Nimrod] went forth 
to Asshur and builded," making Nim- 
rod the founder of Nineveh. To this 
agree many authorities.f Thus they make 
the original of Nineveh to be Cushitic. 
That the ordinary reading of the text in 
Genesis is correct, assented Luther and 
Calvin ; the Septuagint and Vulgate also 

* For excellent charts of four early empires see 
Clark and Grove's Bible Atlas. 

t Lange, Knobel, Baumgarten, particularly Ka- 
lisch On Gen. 



THE CHALDAIC KINGDOM 45 



took this rendering; Josephus* tells us 
that Asshur, the son of Shem, founded 
Nineveh, and the Assyrian kingdom. We 
know that the Shemitic origin of the 
Assyrians has never been questioned, and 
for a time even overshadowed its Baby- 
lonian neighbor, causing many to doubt 
the Cushite origin of that city. 

Rawlinson's later researches f have con- 
vinced him that the Ninevite kingdom 
was established not by Nimrod, but by 
Asshur, the son of Shem. The triumph- 
ant vindication of this fact, Sir H. Raw- 
linson considers one of the most shin- 
ing proofs that " In the Toldoth Beni 
Noah, is undoubtedly the most authentic 
record we possess for the affiliation of 
those races which sprung from the triple 
stock of Noah. It will be by far our 
safest plan to follow the general scheme 
of ethnic affiliations which is given in the 
tenth chapter of Genesis." % Those who 
do follow this genealogical table, have 
never been put to shame by later discover- 
ies, as, for instance, was Bunsen, after his 
loud denial of Asiatic Cushites. 

Says Niebuhr, in his Lectures on An- 
cient History, " The fact of the founder 
of Nineveh being called Ninus in the tra- 
ditions, is quite in accordance with the 
common practice ; in Genesis the name 
used is Asshur." 

Our most evident and reasonable de- 
duction from all history, sacred and pro- 
fane, concerning this subject is clearly 
this : Flying from Babel at the dispersion, 

* Josephus, Antiquities, Ch. VII. 
t Hist. III. of O. T. ; Five Great Monarchies, 
Vol. I. 

\ Bampton Led. 1859. 



4 6 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



Asshur went northward and settled on 
the upper part of the Mesopotamian val- 
ley ; Asshur — the man with his people — 
fled from Babel ; Asshur, in the person of 
his descendants, built Nineveh ; Asshur 
the man, probably founded first the city 
of Caleh,* and established his people in 
that region ; and his Assyrian descend- 
ants and subjects carried on his project, 
and extended their boundaries, building 
Nineveh as their power augmented. 

The early Assyrians looked to Babylon 
with regard, as their original home, and 
the centre of their own form of worship ; 
they frequently carried their dead to be 
buried in Babylonia. The mode of writ- 
ing of the Assyrians was derived from 
Babylon ; f so was most of their religion. 
While thus in their prejudices and cos- 
mogony bearing the stamp of their early 
home, in other particulars they exhibited 
their affinities of blood. The physical 
conformation of the Assyrians was Jew- 
ish ; their descendants in Kurdistan pre- 
serve this resemblance, with a muscular 
development superior to the Jew.$ 

In mental characteristics the Assyrian 
was also like his Semitic brethren.§ He 
was intensely religious; he had the Jew- 
ish sensuousness, that excessive love of 
beauty cropping out everywhere in the 
Old Testament history. How Solomon 
revelled in it ; how careful is the chron- 
icler to tell of the beauty of Joseph, of 
Rachel, Moses, Ruth, David, Esther ; of 
all the heroes and heroines of his story ! 

* Rawlinson, Hist. III. of O. T. 
t Ibid. 

\ Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies, Vol. I. 
§ Ibid. 



THE CHALDAIC KINGDOM. 



The Assyrian sensuousness, unchastened 
by a pure faith, such as was delivered to 
the Jews, comes forth gross and material 
in its exercise. The language of the As- 
syrians was Shemitic* 

The Assyrian monarchy grew rapidly 
in strength and in luxury. It was God's 
ordained scourge upon Israel. The North- 
ern Empire was soon on an equality with 
the Southern, and eventually absorbed it ; 
the valleys of the Tigris and the Eu- 
phrates furnished the conquerors of the 
greater part of the then known world. 

Immediately on their departure from 
Babel, the religion of the Assyrians seems 
to have grown more intensely material- 
istic, and they placed " the great god 
Asshur " at the head of their Pantheon ; 
they also worshipped Bel as zealously as 
did the Babylonians ; and, indeed, the 
Assyrian and Babylonian religions were 
nearly identical. The independent king- 
dom of Assyria lasted a thousand years ; 
its empire some seven centuries, then 
" the Median took the kingdom." f 

When Ham and his descendants, with 
the exception of the Nimrodites, fled 
from Shinar, Canaan, the youngest son, 
found that his terror of Babel had ex- 
hausted itself, and his migrative impulse 
had been expended, when he reached the 
fertile and beautiful land which has ever 
since borne his name. Arriving here, 
Canaan and the eleven tribes of his de- 
scendants spread themselves abroad in the 
localities which most pleased them : The 
first-born, Sidon, laid the foundations of a 
maritime city, which still exists. Jose- 

* Ibid. Ch. V. {Second Monarchy). 

t Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies, Vol. I. 



4 s 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



phus mentions the Arkites at Arce ; Jebus 
entrenched himself upon those mountains 
of Zion that were afterwards to be trodden 
by the feet and bedewed by the blood of 
One — God and Man. The Hivite sat 
down under Hermon, with its crown of 
snow ; and most of these families re- 
tained their individual inheritance until 
the establishment of the Hebrew mon- 
archy. 

The Bible distinctly sets forth the 
early Canaanites as of the Hamitic stock. 
This was boldly questioned by modern 
authors for a long period ; but the most 
recent investigations have now caused it 
to be looked upon as certain, quite apart 
from Scripture statement,* that these 
people were of the stock of Ham. Bun- 
sen energetically asserts that the Cana- 
anites were Phoenicians — Shemites ; but 
says Sir H. Rawlinson,f " All the Canaan- 
ites were, I am satisfied, Scyths ; and the 
inhabitants of Syria retained their dis- 
tinctive ethnic character until a very late 
period, and gave way but slowly before 
other emigrants — Jews, Aramaeans, Phoe- 
nicians, who were Shemitic." The 
Canaanites of the first settlement were 
" fierce intractable warriors ; " the Phoe- 
nicians who entered upon their cities 
were " quiet and peaceable traffickers, 
skilful in navigation and the arts." 
Between Canaanites and Jews was a 
deadly antipathy ; between Jews and 
Phoenicians there was the amity of com- 
mon stock.;}: The ancient writers affirm 
that the Canaanites came from the region 

* Bampton Lectures, 1859. See Appendix. 

t Journal of the Asiatic Society, Vol. XV. 
X Rawlinson, Toldoth Beni Noah, Ch. II. 



THE CHALDAIC KINGDOM. 



of the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean 
coast : their oldest mythology makes them 
sons of Phoenix and Agenor, and shows 
them akin to Egypt and Babylonia. 
Overborne and absorbed by immigrations 
of other races, their language perished, 
their letters (if, indeed, they possessed 
any) also destroyed, their cosmogony used 
as waste material for upbuilding the relig- 
ious fabrics of those who came after them, 
the Canaanites are for us a lost people. 

Into the southern portion of the 
Canaanitic possessions came, not long 
subsequent to their settlement, a migra- 
tion of a cognate people, the Philistines. 
Mizraim had a family of the Casluhim 
who settled to the east of the Nile, in the 
Suez region. Out of them went a fam- 
ily known as Philistim — Hamites : fierce, 
bloody, worshippers of many gods, event- 
ually possessors of *' cities- walled up to 
Heaven." They too slowly perished away 
before the Shemites, like hoar-frost be- 
fore the sun. 

We turn now to that great region of 
Arabia, where, unchanged as their deserts 
and their crags, abides a race which went 
out from Babel. 

When the world's great marching 
orders rang from the passing LORD into 
the hearts of the children of men, we 
have seen how Asshur fled to the North. 
Another branch of the Shemites started 
almost directly for the South. 

Joktan, the son of Eber, was the prince 
of thirteen tribes, brother to Peleg. Jok- 
tan possessed many of the Nomad in- 
stincts of the race of Arphaxad. Asshur, 
his kinsman, led out a host full of ambi- 
tion, hot in war, luxurious in tastes, ava- 
4 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



ricious of the conqueror's power, fathers 
of great cities and renowned palaces. 
Joktan headed an emigration less brilliant, 
but far more enduring. To him the 
breath of the desert, full of quivering fire 
was life and delight ; his were the traders, 
and the caravans slowly creeping over the 
long wastes of sand ! His were the shep- 
herds with their flocks ; his the granite 
fortresses of Arabia the Rocky ; his the 
fragrant spices of Arabia the Happy ; 
his Sheba and Ophir, sending gold to Sol- 
omon. His are to-day the swarthy guides, 
and the camp-fire, with its tale of ro- 
mance. 

As there were Asiatic and African 
Cushites, so there were Shemitic or pure 
Arabs, i. e., the Joktanidae, and Cushite 
Arabs, who probably entered the penin- 
sula at a later day. These latter were the 
hosts of another Sheba, and Dedan, the 
last mentioned descendants of Cush ; * 
these settled by the Persian Gulf, and are 
supposed to be a second immigration, 
though they may possibly have appeared 
there at the first dispersion. f The de- 
scendants of Ishmael and of Abraham by 
Keturah also made part of the Arab tribes 
at a later day. 

Under the Saracenic Caliphs, the Arabs 
reached a wide dominion in Africa and 
Europe. The Arab tongue is rich and 
copious. Arts, sciences and literature have 
been cherished by them, and Europe X 
has long been in their debt for a revival 
of letters and inventions. Descended 

* Gen. VII. 

f Rawlinson, in Bampton Lect., 1859; also, Tol- 
doth Beni Noah, 

% Crichton, Arabia a?id its People, Ch. XIII. 



THE CHALDAIC KINGDOM. 51 



from holy Eber, and from the Abraham- 
idse, the religious instincts of the Arabs 
were monotheistic ; they are naturally a 
devout people, who 

" See God in clouds, and hear him in the wind." 

The Rechabites furnished a lesson to 
God's people. Superstition finds, how- 
ever, a chosen home in their hearts, and 
they yield homage to their glowing con- 
stellations. Among the Cushite Arabs a 
gross idolatry prevailed. 

Yet another descendant of Shem occu- 
pied the portion of territory which we 
have under consideration : Aram, the 
patriarch of the Aramaeans, the father of 
four tribes enumerated for us in Gen. x. 
23. (Mash is considered a mis-translation 
for Meshech.*) The Aramaeans occupied 
the highlands between the Tigris and the 
Mediterranean, the country now called 
Syria. Some of the earliest branches 
strayed into Palestine, and were subse- 
quently overpowered by Hamites: here 
was Damascus, the ancient city, and here, 
in the land of Uz, lived the patriarch 
Job. From the Book of Job we should 
infer that Aram and his children for a 
number of generations held the divinely 
delivered worship of their ancestors. 
Baron Larrey, in his work on anatomy, 
regards the Syro-Arabian race as the 
model of physical perfection. 

Elam, the eldest son of Shem, settled 
not far from his brother Asshur, on the 
east bank of the Tigris at Susa. The 
first Elamites were, after several centu- 
ries, overrun f by Cushites (Cisseans) from 

* Rawlinson, Toldoth Beni Noah. 
Mbid. 



52 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



the Babel district ; but until the time of 
Strabo, the Shemitic line of Elam was 
held distinct from the Hamitic invaders. 
Out of Elam grew the great Persian mon- 
archy : here stood Sushan the palace ; 
here flowed the river Ulai ; here Esther 
reached a throne. Out of Persia came 
deliverance to Israel ; hence went the 
freed captives home, loaded with gifts to 
build the Temple of the Lord. And no- 
tably this is the only one of the nations 
who of old fought against the Jews, 
which has in the nineteenth century an 
independent kingdom, growing in strength 
and enlightenment. 

Hitherto we have found Hamites and 
Semites in this territory spreading about 
Shinar. We come now upon a migration 
of an entirely different race: Madai — the 
Medes — the third son of Japheth. 
" Here," says Rawlinson, " is no room for 
doubt." * The Medes were of the prin- 
cipal races : f Berosus records a very 
early conquest of Chaldea by them. Tra- 
dition speaks of a powerful Median race, 
before Abraham left Ur. Philology also 
lends her light, and finds in the very 
earliest records of Chaldea of the " Four 
Tongues," the ineffaceable mark of Ja- 
pheth, the Aryan root, the very term 
Aryan itself.^ 

Of the sons of Japheth, the latest re- 
searches and discoveries have shown that 
into the heart of Madai was poured the 
fullest migrative impulse. We shall find 
the traces of the Median wherever we 
look in the world. The first power of 

* Sunday Mag., 1869. 

t Bunsen, Egypt, Vol. III. 

X Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies, Vol. I. 



THE CHALDAIC KINGDOM. ' 53 



the Mede waned for a season before the 
splendor of Babylonia ; its glory rose 
again upon the fall of Assyria. 

We meet in the myths of the Greeks 
the shadowy memory of Javan's elder 
brother and his sons — Medea and Androm- 
eda — legends older than Homer, remi- 
niscences of household names, when all the 
sons of Japheth lived under their father's 
roof ! We have here only to suggest the 
dispersion of the Medes : we see Madai 
take his first flight, going far from his 
brothers, and settling on an Eastern 
mountain-land. We leave him here, but 
shall hereafter find that his heart did not 
repose. The migrative impulse was " like 
a fire in his bones." His indeed were 
" tribes of the wandering foot, and weary 
breast," and to this very day we find his 
sons circling the globe in their straying, 
forever unable to find a home ; people 
concerning whom one feels, that either at 
death they must be entirely transformed 
by the exclusion of the migrative passion, 
or that the heavenly land must have end- 
less reaches, where these constitutional 
Nomads may wander forever! 

Note. — The migrations of the Hebrews lie apart 
from the Babel dispersion. The first of their pil- 
grimages began in Eber. Peleg seems to have con- 
tinued it ; Terah received an absolute command of 
departure ; Abraham heard the marching orders 
given to his father, " and they went forth to go into 
the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they 
came." We find Abraham going twice to Egypt 
through the Philistine country; his descendants 
under Jacob repair to Egypt, and are there in bond- 
age. Under Moses they are marshalled to go to the 
land of their inheritance, which is lying in the posses- 
sion of the Cushites. We mark the gathered host, 
the wondrous flight, the last national migration 
recorded in Scripture. We follow the forty years 



54 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



of wandering, and see the Hebrews poured forth 
upon the cities of the Canaanites, a new migration, 
sweeping away old landmarks, conquering citadels, 
absorbing or rooting out the first inhabitants. 
When they thus settled in Canaan, they became 
neighbors to a tribe of their own kindred, who at 
some unknown period overcame the Cushite set- 
tlers, and took possession of Sidon and Tyre, and 
became the great pioneer traders of the world — the 
Phoenicians. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE MONUMENTAL LAND. 

" Till then, by nature crowned, each patriarch sat ! 
King, priest, and parent of the growing state." 

The world's first masters were Hamites. 
The youngest son of Noah took Africa 
for his possession; a realm that "has 
filled a third part of the earth with its ir- 
repressible negroes, its fame, its woes, 
and its varied wealth." * 

It was a long and dreary journey which 
these early men undertook. " They 
braved the perils and privations of travel 
across an unknown desert ; the terror of 
an invincible power awed their spirits ; 
nor were they ever allowed to rest until 
they had reached the utmost borders of a 
land, which He who pursued them had 
destined them to populate/' f " Hither 
they came, these Fathers of ancient 
Egypt, at the first dispersion of mankind, 
and the civilization of the Nile land was 
derived from the banks of the Euphrates.;): 

During their flight the Hamitic host 
had dwindled a little. Canaan and his 
many families tarried by the Jordan, a 
race doomed to slavery and extermina- 
tion ; Mizraim, the genius of that early 
age, stayed his step, when he found a 

* Prof. Smyth, On Equal Surface Projection. 
t Wm. Osburn. 
t Ibid. 



56 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



land of food, a land of brick and mortar, 
granite and limestone. In this land he 
built the altars of the setting sun ; he or- 
dained the reign of culture. Here were 
the papyrus and the rock for his writing ; 
here his building might defy time ; here 
his language and his realm and his mon- 
uments might grow with equal pace, and 
here, when his day was done, he should 
fail away before the breath of the Al- 
mighty, smitten by a mysterious decay, 
and age after age should go to read the 
history and the epitaph which he had left 
recorded above his own grave. Mizraim 
had not been long in his new territory 
when the Casluhim line of his family re- 
crossed the Isthmus of Suez, along which 
they established themselves on the track 
of the mighty caravans that were to come 
and go between the East and the West. 
Out of this family the Philistim divided 
before Abraham's day, and settled be- 
tween the Isthmus and Canaan. 

We see Mizraim standing between Cush 
in Ethiopia, and Nimrod in Babel. From 
Babel he had brought away his civiliza- 
tion ; to Cush he looked as his elder 
brother and his religious head ; for it is a 
remarkable fact that the earliest Egyptian 
monuments exhibit frequent scenes of re- 
ligious intercourse between the Egyptians 
and the Ethiopians, or Cushites, and in 
these the priestly superiority is indicated 
as belonging to the Cushite. 

Living not far from the Flood ; having 
heard from the lips of his own father who 
was " a great part " of what he told, of 
the pre-diluvian days and wonders; with 
the awful catastrophe of Babel, its confu- 
sion, its division, its flight, in his own ex^ 



THE MONUMENTAL LAND. 57 



perience, shall we wonder that upon the 
soul of the early Mizraite rested an in- 
tense terror of the supernatural? This 
terror, religion, superstition, blending of 
all, lay upon his spirit like a mighty 
weight : his material nature could not as- 
cend the lofty altitudes of faith, where 
Shem and Eber trod in a diviner air ; the 
religion delivered by Noah had been too 
sublime, too mystic, too pure for the 
gross mental grasp of Ham and Mizraim ; 
the idea of an unseen God, dwelling in 
light inaccessible ; out of reach of the 
eye but within reach of the voice, yea, 
even of the thought of man, was too sub- 
tle for Mizraim to retain. To him the 
sun became a god ; the moon rose for 
him as a divinity ; the five planets lit the 
midnight, and were deities. All these 
deities he must worship and appease, lest 
upon his new home should fall some other 
Babel blow ; and yet in these early days 
he set up his temple, smooth, square, 
undecorated ; his altar rose with no grav- 
ing tool laid upon it ; the principle which 
Noah had inculcated, that it was sin to 
materially represent the unapproachable 
Deity,* dwelt in the souls of the primi- 
tive Egyptians. Whencesoever then 
might come to these men a religious 
teacher, apostle of a broader faith, espe- 
cially if he brought his light from its pri- 
mal sources, in Shem's household, he 
would be welcomed and followed by the 
Mizraites in any plan which he proposed 
to obey or to placate the Divinity. Miz- 
raim founded first the city of On, or Heli- 
opolis, dedicated to the sun-god. 

* C. P. Smyth, Life and Work at the Great 
Pyramid, Vol. III. 



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BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



Immediately after his death Mizraim 
was deified, as was Asshur. As new cities 
were built they demanded new particular 
gods as patrons, and over the land crept 
the hideous leprosy of polytheism. The 
impure idea demanded the impure sym- 
bol ; now they had idols of wood, stone, 
metal ; now the beast and the reptile be- 
came the type of the god ; now were the 
Egyptians grown more loathsome than 
other races in their religious belief. But 
we anticipate : this was the slow climax of 
generations. In Egypt Architecture was 
born ; here is the fatherland of History ; 
this is the native place of settled Govern- 
ments, and an organized body politic* 
Earth's oldest chroniclers found Egypt 
hoary, and left her in her own fabulous 
antiquity. 

The religion of Egypt, when it had suc- 
ceeded in exhibiting all the evil of the 
heart, run riot in its own devices, remained 
for ages unchanged. Century after cent- 
ury " they poured out their drink offer- 
ings to the Queen of Heaven." Theirs was 
a religion of self-justification ; of ritual ; f 
they had dim glimpses of God's Unity and 
Trinity, also of the incarnation of Deity, 
in Thoth or Hermes, the guide of souls. 
So also did the Mizraites believe in a fu- 
ture state, in the immortality of the soul, 
and in rewards and punishment of deeds 
done in the body. Their holding these 
doctrines of which natural religion does 
not hint, and at which man unaided does 
not arrive, points which were delivered to 
Adam by God, and handed down through 

* Rawlinson, Historical Illustrations of Script- 
ure History. 

t Osborn, Antiquities of Egypt ', Chs. VI., VII. 



THE MONUMENTAL LAND. 



59 



Noah and Shem, is one of the striking 
proofs of the unity of the human race, 
according to the Scriptural account. The 
monumental records of Egypt tell us 
that both its cosmogony and its language 
had Shemitic affinities ; history and phi- 
losophy here lead us back to the same 
point from which revelation sets out. 

Almost the earliest monuments of 
Egypt, and certainly by far the most 
wonderful, is that pyramid called par ex- 
cellence the Great. Around this cluster 
endless investigations and endless discus- 
sions. It is the great landmark of Egypt 
to the tra veller of to-day ; it was the great 
landmark of Egypt when Abraham went 
to sojourn there. 

As the Egyptians were builders at Ba- 
bel, and evidently built on continuously 
after they reached Egypt, there is every 
reason to suppose that their standards of 
measurements by which this pyramid was 
carefully erected, were similar to the 
Babylonian, the Asian , the religious idea 
prevailing when the pyramid was built 
was almost a pure monotheism, as we 
can see from the account of Abraham's 
visit, when the Egyptian king speaks of 
and regards God in almost the same way 
as does Abraham. 

Prof. C. Piazzi Smyth places the dis- 
persion at Babel 272 years after the Del- 
uge, and the building of the Pyramid 358 
years after the Dispersion.* From vari- 
ous statements in ancient history, Prof. 

* See a small catalogue of Pyramid Photographs, 
published in 1874, with several paragraphs of infor- 
mation relative to the Pyramid. Some other au- 
thorities make a longer interval between the Flood 
and Dispersion, about 410-440 years. 



6o 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



Smyth gathers, that in the Pyramid build- 
ing the Egyptians had encouragement 
and instruction from some non-Egyptian 
people ; that the Pyramid is not Egyptian 
in its spirit but Sethic. It is monotheis- 
tic in its idea, and memorial in its inten- 
tion, not in the manner of a tomb, but of 
that witness-pillar set up in the fear of the 
Lord between Abraham and Abimeiech. 
As the witness-pillar between two men 
was small, unremarkable, and perishable, 
the witness-pillar between God and a 
great nation was mighty, mysterious, im- 
perishable. 

The remarks of Prof. Smyth are so 
unique and interesting that though they 
just hint at a theory which he has not 
yet fully developed, we venture to quote 
them. 

" Historically, we are informed by Josephus, that 
in the earlier ages of the world, the sons of Seth, 
in antagonism to the descendants of Cain, did go 
down into Egypt — the land of Siriad — and there 
erect a stone monument replete with astronomical 
truths which they had learned by the Divine aid. 
We learn next from Herodotus, that a shepherd- 
Prince, or Palestinian, or Sethite, Patriarch, with 
his people and flocks, abode m Egypt at the time 
of the building of the pyramid, apparently to further 
its erection. From Egyptian history came the in- 
formation that a shepherd king and his people, 
after being long in the land, left Egypt in a body, 
when the great pyramid was finished, went into 
Palestine, and built the city of Jerusalem and 
lived in it. Whence, with other details gathered 
from the Bible, the conclusion we reach is, that 
this shepherd-king, of the line of Seth, who abode 
in Egypt, only to see the Pyramid complete, can be 
none other than that Melchizedeck, king of Salem, 
to whom in his honored age, even the patriarch 
Abraham gave ' a tenth of all the spoils.' " 

These conclusions drawn by Prof. 
Smyth are exceedingly interesting, and 



THE MONUMENTAL LAND. 61 



much more reasonable than some other 
theories which we have heard advanced, 
though upon Rabbinical authority, as, 
that Melchizedek, since he assumed the 
right to bless Abraham, must have been 
no other than Shem himself. Melchize- 
dek was doubtless of the house of Aram, 
the youngest son of Shem. Before the 
sons of Canaan had fully spread them- 
selves out in the land of Palestine, a 
Shemite settlement was made by mem- 
bers of Aram's family, in places after- 
wards conquered by the Canaanites. 
Thus, probably, Melchizedek established 
himself in Zion, the mount to become so 
famous and so holy, and called a posses- 
sion on which he entered so freely, Sal'em, 
" Peace." In after years Jebusites are 
there ; these are sons of Ham, not peace- 
ful, but treaders under foot. They name 
their homes, not "Peace," but vaunt its 
position as a garrison town — Jebus. Da- 
vid, Shemitic king, unites the two : Je- 
rusalem, " Garrison of Peace." 

But if, indeed, by the aid of a Shemite, 
the Great Pyramid were built as a moni- 
tor of the early revelation, of the mono- 
theistic faith, of the mercy and judgment 
of the Creator ; within a few generations 
its meaning and its warning perished out 
of the Egyptian heart, gone after other 
gods. Solemn and grand it stood, in that 
clear light ; lofty, between the desert and 
the stars ; a witness that man had aban- 
doned his early opportunities, that Miz- 
raim had destroyed himself. 

The families of Egypt were enumerated 
as eight, by the Mosaic genealogist. We 
have seen the Casluhim settle upon Suez ; 
the Philistim remove beyond them ; the 



62 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



Naphtuhim probably were fixed about 
the Mareotic Lake,* between Goshen 
and Shur. The Pathrusim were the 
Egyptians of Upper Egypt, having 
Thebes for their capital. Ultimately 
these became the ruling branch of the 
Mizraite family, absorbing the rest : the 
Caphtorim were not of Crete, as some sup- 
pose^ but of a district north of Thebes, 
nearest neighbors of the nations of Cush4 

* Rawlinson, Totdoth Beni Noah, Ch. V. 
t Clark and Smith's Bible Atlas'mdxks Crete for 
Caphtor. 

\ Rawlinson, Toldoth Beni Noah, Ch. V. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE ETHIOPIAN RACES. 

" Here dwell the Apostate brotherhood consigned 
To everlasting durance ; here they sit, 
Age after age, in melancholy state, 
Still pining in eternal gloom, and lost 
To every comfort." 

In Babylon and in Egypt Ham had 
his day of power. During some centu- 
ries, the world was under Ham's feet ; 
God gave him his chance first ; he had 
fair opportunity to show what the earth 
would become under the domination of 
the Hamitic idea. In his hour of suprem- 
acy, Ham took his brother Shem captive, 
in the line of the Hebrews ; and made 
the Joktanidae sink into mere traders and 
supernumeraries. During this period Ja- 
pheth seemed to have lost himself in his 
wanderings ; to have been swallowed by 
the waves, or devoured by tigers in the 
jungle. His little light flickered in Media, 
and there were rumors of stray Japetidse 
in other localities; but virtually Japheth 
was dead, and Shem was in bondage. 

" This is your hour," said the Creator 
to Ham. It proved to be the very 
" power of darkness " — " darkness covered 
the earth, and gross darkness the people." 
Now was it distinctly shown that mere 
letters, unsanctified by revelation, have 
no high moral power. Architecture can 
as easily become the priestess of the 



64 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



devil, as the handmaid of the Most High. 
Art and inventive genius consecrate 
themselves on the altars of the false, and 
seizing the soul by either hand, guide it 
downward to perdition, if Art and Inven- 
tion have not been the pupils of that 
divine Wisdom, " which was set up from 
everlasting before ever the earth was." 

Ham was the father of Egypt, of earli- 
est Chaldea, of Canaan, of one branch of 
the Arabs. The world has accepted 
freely these sons as part of the family of 
Adam; but Ham going into farther Af- 
rica, sent forth numerous tribes, whom 
the world, in its later wisdom, refused to 
consider of the Adamic family. 

Here — happy idea ! — were beings be- 
tween men and brutes, or a lower grade 
of men. There was something less than 
of Noachidae about them ; their brains 
were different ; their souls were different ; 
their bodies were different. These were 
men not of like passions as are we ; these 
were mere inferior-Troglodytes ! But 
Science, sending forth two discoverers, 
Anatomy and Philology, destroyed this 
beautiful hypothesis. Said Anatomy: 
" As it is absurd to maintain that all va- 
rieties of swine have not descended from 
the wild boar,* and as it is madness to 
declare that a poodle and an Esquimaux 
dog are not of the same species, so is it 
madness to deny that all men, even these 
Africans in question, are not the offspring 
of one human pair." And, remonstrated 
Philology, " all dialects, even the most 
meagre and monosyllabic, are dialects of 
one speech, now lost." f 

* Blumenbach, and Lawrence. 

t Petersburg Acadeiny Journal; also Kalproth. 



THE ETHIOPIAN RACES. 65 



Now that we, in our researches in mi- 
grations, are going deep into Africa, it is 
comforting to know that we are not going 
outside the limits of our race ! We shall 
find men ignorant, ugly, degraded no 
doubt, but what humanity must eventu- 
ally become if apart from revelation ! 

The centre of Hamitic history presents 
to us a succession of barbaric splendors, 
wet with blood, and lit with fire : strug- 
gling now to the light in the individual, 
ever falling lower in the national. Out- 
side of this centre wander away dreary, 
unhelped, demoralized tribes, going so 
low toward the brute, that you look on 
them and wonder that in the early child- 
hood of history, these stood even repre- 
sentatively by Noah's altar of burnt offer- 
ing, and as the sweet savor floated toward 
the Asian skies, beheld a ." bow in the 
cloud." The ages when we behold him 
are ever burdened with the " agony of 
Kham."* The writer of the genealogy 
contained in Gen. x. applies the word 
Cusk, not only to the Cushites proper, 
but to their kindred in Arabia and Chal- 
dea.f 

While there was a wide and increasing 
difference between the languages of the 
Hamites and Shemites, there was also an 
obvious relationship between them ; they 
were cognate tongues ; and the North Af- 
rican dialects to this day bear the Shem- 
ite mark, and are called sub-Shemitic. 
This, as we shall see, was partly due to a 
subsequent intermixture of Shemites, with 
the Cushite tribes. \ Cush, elder brother 

* Bunsen, Christianity and Mankind, Vol. IV. 
fRawlinson, in Sunday at Home, Feb. 1869. 
\ Bible in Every Land, Map No. II. 

5 



66 BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



of Mizraim, settled immediately south of 
Egypt, in modern Abyssinia. His coun- 
try appears in ancient history, both sa- 
cred and profane, as Ethiopia. Herodo- 
tus tells us of Eastern and Western Ethi- 
opians ; the former in Asia, the latter in 
Africa ; and in his day these two branches 
were physically distinguished. The his- 
torian notes that the Asiatic Cushites had 
straight hair, the African, close curled 
hair: we have already seen that Nimrod 
and certain Arabian tribes were descended 
from Cush. The ancients had a very in- 
definite idea of the extent of Ethiopia ; 
to them it stretched everywhere south 
of known lands, spreading out even to 
India ! 

The Cushites at one time had famous 
and wealthy cities : they were warlike, 
and frequently in alliance with the Egyp- 
tians. The religion of Ethiopia was a 
gross idolatry, " the worship of Ammon 
and his kindred deities."* In the Old 
Testament history we often come upon 
the names of Ethiopians, as Tirhakah, the 
mighty monarch ; and Zerach, with his 
armies. Josephus, and the Abyssinian 
legends, unite in claiming that queen of 
Sheba who visited Solomon, for an Ethiop 
queen ; and as there were Cushite Arabi- 
ans at one Sheba, the dominion of Ethio- 
pia may have extended over them, and 
the queen of Ethiopia, with her gold, 
her ivory, her profusion of gifts, may also 
have been queen of Sheba, and have 
reached Jerusalem from her nearest capi- 
tal. In the New Testament we get an- 
other glimpse of Ethiopian royalty, and 

* Kitto, Bible Encyclopedia, Art. Ethiopia ; Ja- 
cob Bryant's Mythology. 



THE ETHIOPIAN RACES. 



6/ 



see Candace's treasurer going homewards 
in his chariot. 

Phut, the third son of Ham, has occa- 
sioned many contradictions among the 
learned : that he accompanied the migra- 
tion into Africa all admit : Josephus and 
the Septuagint place Phut in Libya, in 
the region now known as Tripoli ; Kalisch 
finds him on the Delta ; Rawlinson be- 
tween Abyssinia and Egypt, in Nubia. 
The most recent researches in anatomy 
and philology point to the ancient the- 
ory, and show us the original Libyans as 
kin to the Egyptians, Ethiopians, and 
Canaanites — in fact, exactly this lost 
brother, Phut. There was ample reason 
for Phut's geographical disappearance. 
His kingdom moved very slowly toward 
strength and civilization ; his chief distinc- 
tion was in archery, and his emblem was 
the bow. 

About eight centuries before Christ, 
an enemy came upon Phut. Lud,* the 
fourth son of Shem had taken refuge in 
the Armenian mountains, above his 
brother Asshur, after the Babel disper- 
sion. The Ludim were a warlike, ener- 
getic people, renowned as horsemen. At 
the date we have mentioned, led by 
choice, or by force, the Ludim left their 
mountain fastnesses, rushed across Syria 
and Suez and Egypt, and established 
themselves between Phat and his brother 
Mizraim. 

These Ludites, sons of Shem, received 
from the Egyptians many of their cus- 
toms and opinions ; they gave to the 

* See Rawlinson, in Sunday at Home, 1869; and 
Kalisch, Com. on Gen. Note how the theory of 
Kalisch reconciles the doubts of Rawlinson. 



65 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



weaker race of Phut much of their own 
language and blood, infusing a strong 
Shemitic element into his daily life. But 
migration was the ruling passion with the 
Ludites ; they sent inhabitants into the 
Balearic group, and to several other Medi- 
terranean isles," then they spread out 
into the Sahara, and occupied the oases. 
On, on, went the march of Shem's rest- 
less son, across the burning continent. 
He came to the sea, but the mastering 
impulse was upon him still ; there were 
islands beyond, and he took possession of 
the Canaries.f As his distant progenitor 
had been a shepherd, so this wanderer 
was a keeper of flocks. He had learned 
of Mizraim to embalm his dead, and his 
mummies are laid up in rock tombs upon 
Teneriffe. 

And now have we lost them ? Are 
their wanderings ended? Science, "busy 
here and there," makes a fresh discovery. 
Retzius, one in the first rank of ethnolo- 
gists for discovering race affinities, assures 
us, that the Guarani of Brazil are true 
Guanches of the Canaries. How did they 
reach Brazil ? Discoveries in deep-sea 
soundings are more and more clearly 
demonstrating that in most ancient times 
a chain of large islands, reefs and banks, 
stretched from before the entrance to the 
Straits of Gibraltar south and west, Ber- 
muda, the Azores, and some of the Cari- 
bees being their yet unsubmerged sum- 
mits. Without accepting any of the wild 
theories set forth in the book Atlantis, 
we can yet feel assured that within a 

* Prichard, Natural History of Man. Ap- 
pendix. 

t Prichard, Eastern Orzgm of Celtic Races. 



THE ETHIOPIAN RACES, 



69 



thousand years from the flood, islands 
now lost, spread fair and green on the 
bosom of the Atlantic, and made the 
peopling of Eastern America possible 
from the Spanish and Barbary and Ca- 
nary coasts. 

Only a little while ago lost relics of 
Phut's race — the wonderful Guanches — 
climbed to the top of Teneriffe, to visit 
an astronomer* there, having heard that 
he had discovered goats in the moon ! 
Doubtless the impulse of migration was 
yet upon them, and if goats — indispensa- 
ble goats — had been seen in the moon, 
the Guanche would have found some 
means of getting there ! 

While we consider the loss of Phut, — 
a small loss to the world, after all!- — let 
us notice that the Phoenicians — Shemites 
— dotted the north coast of Africa with 
their trading stations, so far as the Pillars 
of Hercules — Tartessus. The ancients 
called the Carthaginians bi-lingual, be- 
cause they spoke the Libyan of Phut, 
and the Phoenician of Shem — Berber and 
Hebrew.f 

Having remembered that Canaan re- 
mained in Asia, we have now accounted 
for the four sons of Ham. We have also 
seen how Mizraim disposed of the greater 
number of his descendants ; his third 
family, the Lehabim4 are supposed to 
have gone into Libya. 

To Cush fell a widely extended terrL 
tory ; great wealth, poorly used ; a nu. 
merous people, wielding very little in. 

* Prof. Piazzi Smyth, An Astronomer's Experi- 
ment ; Life above the Clouds. 

t See Prichard, Nat. Hist, of Man., Vol. I. 
X Kalisch. 



70 BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



fluence among the nations. The first 
city built by Cush in his new home was 
probably called Seba, or Saba, from the 
name -of his elder son — (we see this cus- 
tom originated by Cain.) Josephus tells 
us that until Cambyses changed Saba to 
Meroe, the name of the capital of Ethio- 
pia, from its first foundation, had been 
Saba. Several of the sons of Cush crossed 
into the Arabian peninsula, and wandering 
along the coast, established settlements 
even so far as Raamah and Dedan on- the 
Persian Gulf. These became noted among 
the nations of old for wealth and luxury. 
Sabetechah, the youngest son of Cush, 
has by some been identified with Zangue- 
bar or Negrita, on the authority of the 
Targum of Jonathan.* 

During nearly four thousand years the 
sons of Cush have been slowly wandering 
over the torrid, monster-infested plains, 
and mountains of Africa. They are di- 
vided into an almost infinite number of 
tribes, possessing an equal number of dia- 
lects, some of them of the most imperfect 
and rudimentary kind. The sons of Cush 
have been retrograding in speech. Hav- 
ing few lofty ideas, their minds dwarfed 
by the loss of that revelation which en- 
lightened their elder brethren, they needed 
age by age fewer and fewer words to ex- 
press themselves. Living as savage wan- 
derers, their dialects became continually 
more diverse from each other, and more 
contracted in themselves. Multce terru 
colis HngucB, ccelestibus una. 

Two great kingdoms rise for us in 
Africa after Egypt wanes— Ethiopia, and 
Abyssinia. Ethiopia shines with a lurid 
* Ibid., Com. on Gen. 



THE ETHIOPIA IV RACES. 



71 



splendor, suffers dim eclipse, and from 
the days of Augustus Caesar and St. Luke 
fades out of sight ; the vanishing chariot- 
wheels of Candace's treasurer are our last 
glimpse of Ethiopia. 

Abyssinia grew under the sway of Cush- 
ite Arabs, who came upon the Agaazi 
element, first brought into the country 
from Sennaar. The Abyssinians are there- 
fore a mixed race, with a mixed speech, 
but among them we find the Amaara, 
remnants of the very first Cushites — a 
nation and a language so old that they 
are called Troglodytes. The progress of 
migration seems to have been from Ethio- 
pia down the South-eastern coast, through 
Shangalla and Galla-land ; the people, as 
they wandered farther from the first set- 
tlement, becoming more degraded in 
their religious ideas, and consequently in 
their morals, losing their culture and 
their architectural genius. They have 
none of them fallen so low as to deny, or to 
doubt, the existence of a god ; * they left 
that depth to sons of Japheth ; otherwise 
they have exhibited to the last degree 
man's capacity for deterioration. 

All the races of Africa retain traces of 
the early religious faith. They own one 
greatest god, who dwells beyond the sky; 
they believe also in a malicious evil deity, 
capable of doing them harm, and who 
must be placated by offerings ; they hold 
the immortality of the soul, and two 
states after death. A belief in charms, 
spells, witchcraft, and astrology distin- 
guishes them, as it belongs to all false re- 
ligions. Such belief is the product of 
man's soul disturbed in itself, and apart 

* Prichard, Nat. Hist, of Man'., Book III. Ch. V. 



7 2 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



from the peace of the true faith. Most 
of the Negro tribes believe themselves, 
and all created things, to be the handi- 
work of the good god to whom they 
pray ; their ills come from the evil being, 
to whom they sacrifice. Some tribes 
have the tradition of an evil Serpent; 
others of the Son of their Great God, who 
is their friend, and Mediator with his 
Father.* 

Prichard concludes that all the tribes 
in Africa are of the descendants of three, 
or at most, four great families/)* The 
most northerly have only an admixture of 
Hamitic blood, being of Syro-Arabian 
stock. The true descendants of Ham in 
Africa he concludes to be the Galla fami- 
lies, and their cognate tribes, to the east 
and south of Abyssinia ; the next and 
more widely dispersed family he finds in 
South Africa, from the equator to the 
Southern tropic : another line of families 
he considers may be found in Soudan 
and Guinea, and Senegambia. But there 
is yet a fourth family to be found about 
the Cape of Good Hope, and the Orange 
River. 

That great island of Madagascar, which 
lies east of Africa, may be regarded as 
the last outpost of Polynesia. Here, very 
anciently, were certainly immigrants 
from the African Continent, and these 
have since been invaded by wanderers, 
coming from the eastward, from the isles 
of the Indian Ocean. It has not yet been 
determined — perhaps may never be — 

* Oldenorp on Negro Psychology ; also, Christo- 
pher Protten, Author of a Gra?nmar of the Accra 
Language. 

t Natural Hist, -of Man. 



THE E THIOPIA N RA CES. 73 



whether passing out of Madagascar, rest- 
less Africans reached those distant isles 
south and east of their continent. Prob- 
ably Ham did very little toward peopling 
Polynesia, and has, of his own free will, 
very seldom strayed out of Africa. It 
took very many centuries for the Ha- 
mites to spread themselves from Cape Bon 
to the Cape of Good Hope, from Cape 
Verd to Guardafui. Perchance by this 
time the grand passion of migration had 
died to a feeble and fickle unrest. 

There are to be found in North and 
South America — apart from the negroes 
of the United States, who are historically 
accounted for — spots of black natives. 
These are the Charruas or Guavans of 
Brazil, the Black Carribees of St. Vincent, 
the Jamessi in Florida. Balboa found a 
black tribe on the Isthmus of Darien in 
1 5 13. Negro-loid faces are depicted in 
South American carvings. The method 
of their migration has already been sug- 
gested. 



CHAPTER V. 



INDIA. 

" Ample was the boon 
He gave them, in its distribution fair 
And equal, and he bade them dwell in peace. 
Peace was awhile their care. They ploughed and 
sowed, 

And reaped their plenty without grudge or strife. 
But violence lies never long asleep." 

The hunter tracking his prey, the sav- 
age pursuing his victim through pathless 
wastes, follows sure-eyed, certain, perhaps 
faint, indications — dents in the soil, the 
slight displacement of stones, the break- 
ing of twigs and leaves. The bloodhound 
follows by scent. 

From the earliest times, the three grand 
parental races which have moved across 
and populated the world, have left their 
certain traces behind them — by their arch- 
itectural remains we can follow their way. 

The Hamitic races were the first and 
most ardent of the world's builders. 
Great strength, endurance, accuracy, and 
majestic proportions, characterized the 
Hamitic architectural idea. Ham left the 
pyramid for his exponent ; but he built 
many cities and many temples. His, 
however, was the doom of decadence ; as 
his sons spread abroad, their building idea 
perished away. 

The Shemites were primarily never a 
building race.* They went to school in 

* See Fergusson, Hist, of Architecture. 



INDIA. 



75 



Egypt for several centuries ; also they 
had especial inspiration for two kinds of 
buildings ;* but with all this human and 
divine aid, Shem never became as a 
builder anything more than a copyist : 
building walls for his protection ; palaces 
for his kings ; cities for his traders ; mak- 
ing nothing to outlast himself. Ruins 
such as strew the Tigris plain are all the ' 
world-heirs of Shem's building. We call 
Ham therefore the Monument-builder ; 
Shem is the Palace-builder; Japheth is 
the Mound-builder. 

Japheth, after the migration era, took 
perhaps a doleful view of life ; his early 
days were hard days, and his highest idea 
of building was to build a tomb. Wher- 
ever Japheth has gone, we track him by 
his mounds. Time spared the Great 
Pyramid because he could not conquer 
it ; Time spared Japheth's great tumuli 
because he mistook them for works of 
nature ! Japheth, in his first pause in 
flight, takes breath at Sardis. We are on 
his track, we mark his delay by the 
tumuli beside the Gygaean Lake ! f At 
Ilion, at Tantalais, at Smyrna, in Greece, in 
Italy, in France, in Wales, in England, 
in Ireland, in every successive migrative 
" spurt " westward, we track him, by his 
mounds, by his circular buildings. But 
Japheth had an even greater Eastern 
flight, and still we follow him by the same 
sign. Media, India, China, the frozen 
North, £ the New World's wilds, the heart 

* The Tabernacle and the Temple. 

t See Prof. Piazzi Smyth, Age of Intellectual 
Man ; chapters on Circular Builders. 

% Mounds in Kamchatka. See Bush, Rei?ideer, 
Dogs and Snow- Shoes. 



7 6 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



of great forests, the course of great rivers, 
Northern, Central, Southern America, 
far down to Patagonia, all bear impress of 
Japheth's migrations. If he had wished 
to hide his footsteps, he should have 
ceased building his mounds. 

It has been no very difficult task to 
sketch in outline the wanderings of Shem. 
The impulse of migration did not press 
him sorely ; except in the Elamites and 
Ludim, Shem did not go far, and the 
Elamites and the Ludim moved mostly 
in straight lines. To follow Shem's mi- 
grations is easy , to follow his final disper- 
sion would be impossible. In his migra- 
tions God kept Shem within a small cir- 
cumference; in his last dispersion. He 
drove him like leaves before a mighty 
wind, abroad in all the earth. Neither 
has it been hard to pursue the course of 
the Hamites in their dividings. The sea 
set bounds for most of them, and 
hemmed them in on every side. 

But leaving Shem and Ham, we have 
come now to Japheth — the world's great 
wanderer. Here is the man of unrest, 
and the man of progress : Japheth is the 
world's true peripatetic philosopher ; his 
is the knowledge which increases by run- 
ning to and fro. Japheth's is the line of 
progress in art. The mournful builder of 
tumuli has become the world's great ar- 
tist and architect. Japheth is the ex- 
pounder of the beautiful ; * Japheth is the 
father of princes, and the founder of king- 
doms. Even Religion when it came to 
Japheth became a travelling religion ; Ja- 
pheth got his gospel with a " go " prefixed 

* Bunsen, Philosophy of Universal History, 
Vol. IV. 



INDIA. 



77 



to it : " Go preach." When Ham meets 
the ocean he has found his limit ; the mi- 
grative impulse drives him no longer; but 
when Japheth comes to the sea, the fiat 
thunders louder than ever in his ear, 
"Go!" Japheth finds a huge mountain 
range over his track; he burrows under it 
like a mole — tunnels the barrier. He 
finds an isthmus delaying him ; he cuts it 
in twain, and produces a river. He finds 
an ocean ; he makes his ships an upper 
bridge, and his telegraph a nether bridge 
for it, where the tangible and the intangi- 
ble can cross it by their separate ways, 
forever. He lays a railroad in a desert, 
and makes a highway in a jungle. He 
wearies himself essaying to traverse the 
fields of air. Shem's hand wavers and he 
lets fall the light of his revelation ; Ja- 
pheth's hand seizes it, and holds it aloft 
over all the world. Ham's oracles become 
dumb, his works cease to utter a voice, 
and Japheth rises up and expounds them. 

Following, then, this wonderful pilgrim, 
from the depths of his darkness into 
light, and from his bleak and uncertain 
childhood into his magnificent maturity, 
will be difficult indeed. For centuries 
the world's great scholars have been busy 
re-tracing the early migrations of Ja- 
pheth, pursuing him in history, philology, 
anatomy, architecture, and yet there are 
many links wanting, and many long 
reaches without a footprint to complete 
the evidence. 

At the very beginning of Japheth's 
course difficulty assails us. Shem's sons 
kept within a known circle ; Ham's tribes 
moved from Babel in one great body ; Ja- 
pheth however, in the very first migrative 



75 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



panic, fled three ways, east, west, north : 
Shem and Ham lived within the scope of 
the earliest genealogist, and in the range 
of earliest records ; thus their original 
names remained to a great extent by 
them, to mark them. But many of Ja- 
pheth's names have changed, or perished, 
and the very oldest lines of his children 
come to us often in strange guise. 

"These," says the Mosaic table, " were 
the sons of Japheth: Gomer and Magog, 
and Madai and Javan, and Tubal, and 
Meshech, and Tiras." Here are seven 
great Japhetic lines announced. It is a 
very significant fact that two of these 
seven nations of Japetidae, are followed 
in their subsequent dividings — Gomer 
and Javan — and these two are nations, 
which lived, as we may say, outside of the 
circle of the Mosaic annalist, and which 
were in his day almost as lost, or utter 
barbarians, without influence or promise 
in the world. 

Hellas, who was to rise as a glorious 
young god in the earth, music on his 
tongue and inspiration in his eyes ; Hel- 
las, from whom two empires were to grow, 
sire of the prophets of the beautiful, and 
of that iron kingdom that should rule the 
world, what was this Hellas in Moses's 
day, a thousand years before Herodotus 
took up the pen ? And what, in that 
day, was Gomer ? Unheard of then, the 
tribes of Celts, whose mighty fingers were 
to undo old Rome's clasp on her sceptre, 
and to circle the world with their devices. 
What, but a chill forest full of savages, 
was the German Land in Moses' day? If 
we were to believe all the other verses of 
the Toldoth Beni Noah to be human tra- 



INDIA, 



79 



dition, and human learning, we should 
stop at these two, which dwell on tribes 
then so exceedingly insignificant, after- 
wards to be so potent, and say, " Here are 
the prescience and the decree of God." 

The Toldoth Beni Noah traces the gen- 
ealogy of the races of the world, because 
it is a document which broadly belongs 
to all the world. But it is one of a series 
of documents concerned primarily with 
the history of the Church of God ; and it 
deals especially with those persons and 
nations who had influence to make, or 
mar, in that Church. Thus, we find pecul- 
iar prominence given to Egypt and to 
Babylon, each of which held, for long pe- 
riods, the Church in bondage, and which, 
as to territory, lay almost on either side 
the Church's promised inheritance. To 
Joktan too, is given an important place, 
because, by blood and by intercourse and 
neighborhood, the Arabs and the He- 
brews were closely allied. Moses, merely 
as an acute historian, might have caught 
a glimpse of these relationships of Baby- 
lon, Egypt and Joktan, to the Church, 
when all the Church was embraced in the 
Hebrews ; he might also have realized the 
bearing of these three in the world of 
their day ; but when he comes to deal in 
like manner with Gomer and Javan, the 
most unbelieving must pause startled, 
asking, Whence had this man wisdom? 
Does he write of the races of Gomer and 
Javan, merely because of their influence 
upon the world, as leading nations, as 
warriors and philosophers? In his day 
Gomer and Javan had none of these dis- 
tinctions. How knew he that the hand 
of Hellas should hold the helm for ages? 



8o BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



that the Grecian mind should, like a king, 
mark its broad-arrow on the world of 
mind forevermore. How did he know 
that where " Gomer's bands " should 
march, their goings forth should be as the 
sun rising, and in them should be the new 
life of humanity, the breath of liberty, 
the stride of progress, the primacy of 
conscience ? 

But we believe that there was more 
than this in the record. The Spirit of 
God dictated this notice of Javan and of 
Gomer in the chronicles of the Church 
because of their future inseparable con- 
nection with that Church. While the Old 
Testament was given in the tongue of 
Heber, the New Testament came in 
the speech of Javan. The Shemite 
tongue served at the altars of the Old 
Dispensation, the Japhethic fills the pul- 
pits of the New. The missionary work 
of the Gospel is mainly carried on by the 
children of Gomer. It is theirs to cast 
up in the deserts a highway for the Lord. 
As the son of Zacharias was the messen- 
ger before the face of Him who came for 
an advent of humiliation, so the sons of 
Gomer are the messengers to prepare for 
His advent of glory. When we see all this 
history wrapped up in the third and 
fourth verses of the tenth chapter of 
Genesis, we can but say, " This is the 
finger of God." 

Javan and Gomer are then the chief 
members of the family of Japheth : next 
to them stands Madai, then Magog. 

Three of the sons of Japheth were Tu- 
bal, Meshech and Tiras. These made no 
delay in Asia, they crossed the Bospho- 
rus in the track of Gomer, our Celtic 



INDIA. 



81 



grandfather, who had hurried on before ; 
Tiras sat down in Thrace ; Tubal, the Ti- 
bareni, upon a tract two days' journey in 
extent, around modern Ordou ; Meshech, 
the Moschi, the Muscovites, near Col- 
chis, in the mountain district of Kars and 
Erzroum.* From the first these people 
had their own language and distinctive 
ethnic character : as says Bancroft, " There 
is no Asian race from which we can derive 
them." 

Ezekiel, about 600 B.C., indicates to us 
an increase in the grand divisions of the 
nation ; reading xxxviii. 2, and xxxix. 
1, as leading critics prefer, "Gog, of the 
land of Magog, the Prince of Ros/i, Me- 
shech, and Tubal." Here enters Rosk, who 
becomes the dominant or naming tribe. 
At this time these people had commerce, 
for Ezekiel tells us that they traded with 
Tyre in slaves (probably selling their 
children and captives) ; f they had also 
some manufactures, for they dealt in " ves- 
sels of brass." They had been for cent- 
uries warlike, for Ezekiel sets them with 
Elam and Assyria — " all her multitudes — 
uncircumcised, slain with the sword, 
though they caused their terror in the 
land of the living." 

Herodotus shows their tribes 480 B.C. 
marching in the army of Xerxes. Tiras, 
or the Thracians, " wore foxes' skins on 
their heads, and about their bodies tunics, 
over which they wore a long cloak of 
many colors. Their legs and feet were 
clad in buskins, made from fawns' skins, 
and they had for arms javelins, with light 
targes and short dirks." " The Moschi 

* Rawlinson, Toldoth Bent Noah. 
f Kalisch, Com. on Gen. 
6 



82 BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



[Muscovites] wore helmets of wood, and 
carried spears, and swords of small size ; 
but their spear-heads were long. The 
Moschian equipment was that of the 
Tibareni." 

In Xenophon's day, 400 B.C., the Ti- 
bareni had improved, and had leather 
helmets, spears nine feet long, and steel 
battle-axes. These Tibareni received the 
Ten Thousand hospitably after the bat- 
tle of Cunaxa, and were then noted as a 
kingly race, fond of games and laughter. 
In their remote position little was known 
of the Muscovites and their kindred. 
About 1000 B.C. they were a race of 
considerable power and numbers, holding 
the principal position in Taurus and Cap- 
padocia. About 700 B.C. the great 
Arian migration to the westward drove 
them into the steppes beyond the Cau- 
casus. In that territory they became 
known as Moskovs, and from them is 
Moscow, the old capital of Russia. Ly- 
ing in the track of those successive migra- 
tions from the teeming central plain of 
Asia, though they had pushed one body 
of Celts westward before themselves, a 
later ebb and reflow of the Celtic tide 
passed over their territories. Strabo tells 
us that when the Celts or Kimmeiri, went 
to Asia Minor the Thracians went with 
them. Out of the Thracians, living 
widely scattered between the Halys, the 
Drave and the Save arose, as most eth- 
nologists claim, the Dacians and the 
Goths, who thundered, under Alaric, at 
the gates of Rome, and overwhelmed 
the seven-hilled city. 

The first son of Japheth whose course 
we must follow is Madai — the Mede. We 



INDIA. 



83 



have seen him setting up a great kingdom 
in Asia north of Persia, the home of the 
Elamites. Here were lofty mountains 
and blooming plains. Madai might sit 
and sing " I have a goodly heritage." 
The early historians represent Madai as 
first dominated by Assyria; then in anar- 
chy ; then ruled by its own kings ; next 
overrun for a number of years by the 
Scyths; after that emerging grandly from 
obscurity, giving a wife to Nebuchadnez- 
zar, and uniting with Babylon for the 
overthrow of Nineveh.*" Afterwards the 
Median seizes Babylon, and we find the 
Medes and Persians united under Cyrus.f 
But these realms, Media and Persia, were 
the gates of another empire. The march 
of nations did not pause at the silver 
Ulai, the wanderers drank of the golden 
Indus, and of the sacred Ganges. Into 
the mountains of India went the sons of 
Japheth. 

The great tribes of the Aryan or Iranic 
race, covering the broad central plateau 
of Asia, and running down from thence by 
many ways, as streams from some great 
watershed, passed one into another with 
scarcely perceptible differences. Tribes 
far apart diverged visibly in tongue and 
physique, but it was difficult to trace the 
slow gradations of this change, from one 
adjacent tribe to another. Their migra- 
tions also were like the flow and reflow of 
the tides of the sea. One wave of the rest- 
less Medes swelled in ante-historic times, 
beyond the mountains which girdle Mes- 
opotamia, and rested upon the Danube. 
How, wonders Herodotus, can these Me- 

I * Niebuhr, Vol. I. Lect. IV. 

+ Niebuhr, Lect. on Anct. Hist. Vol. I. Lect. XI. 



84 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



dians have come so far from home ? But 
the acute old Greek is not to be baffled 
by a question like this ; he unravels the 
mystery thus : * 

" Nothing is impossible in the long 
lapse of ages." In these days, before 
History was born, great races branched 
out of the early Iranian families, and we 
have trace of their origin only in fable. 
Thus the Arabs tell us of eleven sons of 
Japheth, to one of whom — the father of the 
Mongolians — the patriarch Noah gave a 
wonderful stone, bearing the name of 
God. The name of these unchronicled 
sons of Noah passes away ; the marvellous 
stone is lost ; we have only the fact of 
the Mongolians, massed at first in Central 
Asia, and afterward dividing into two 
branches, Mongolians and Malays. We 
have also the romance of King Feridim, 
with his three sons Tur, Silim, Irij. 
The romance is the shadow of a memory, 
but the nations of the Turks are a present 
fact in history ; and all these, Mongols, 
Malays, Turks, and many more, are the 
outgrowth of the vagrant race of Japheth, 
in their successive migrations. The ear- 
liest of these wanderers were probably 
of the race called Turanian, from whence 
sprung the Turks, Tartars, Mongols Ma- 
lays. " Wherever the Aryans went they 
found the pilgrim sons of Tur before 
them/'t 

We find in India two distinct races of 
men : the first settlers pressed into the 
mountains while Persia and Media were 
in their cradles, and the first Chaldean 
empire was in the feebleness of its child- 

* Herod, v. 9. 

t Bunsen, Philosophy of Univ. Hist. Vol. II. 



INDIA. 



85 



hood. In these early days, emigrations 
were not the result of war and of over- 
crowding, as is the case in our day ; but - 
they can only be explained as the out- 
working of a master-impulse, supernat- 
urally implanted. In the Asiatic Re- 
searches, we find an earnest article, main- 
taining the Cushite descent of the first 
settlers in India,* supposing them to be 
Cushites from Babylon ; and in support 
of this theory, the ancient intercourse be- 
tween Egypt and India is brought for- 
ward ; also that India was called Oriental 
Ethiopia, and that the earliest Indians 
held the Nild, a sacred river in Cusk- 
dzvip,\ holy ; also that the names of Cush, 
Mizr and Rama remain unchanged, and 
revered by the Hindus. Thus it is ar- 
gued that many early Chaldeans went into 
India making a primary Hamitic stratum, 
and, that this immigration was overlaid by 
a superior people of the Median-Japhetic 
stock, with a mingling of the Persian 
Shemites. In support of this theory it 
may be alleged, that the aborigines of In- 
dia are to this day a distinct race, with 
Hamitic features, and that their language 
in its purity is not related to the Sanskrit, 
while that wonderful tongue pervades 
nearly all the European and Asiatic lan- 
guages. 

The Persians and Indians both claim 
to be Aryans, and make good their claim 
by their physique, and their philology, 
while " the aboriginal mountaineers of In- 
dia were foreign to the Indian race." J 
" There are aboriginal settlers long on the 

* Asiatic Researches, Vol. III. 
Xlbid. 

\ Prichard, Nat. Hist, of Man., Vol. I. 



So 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



ground, before the Aryan Hindoos passed 
the Indus."* Seeing this second stratum 
of immigration, finding the second race 
dominant, it is interesting to mark in the 
earliest Vedas, and the ancient poems of 
India, an acknowledgment that all these 
races, of the first and second migrations, 
had one origin — all are the children of 
one God. So far away from the Shinar 
plain, in a people so long kept separate, 
a race with a language fully equal to the 
Greek, the Hebrew and the Latin, a race 
of poets, philosophers, priests, it is most 
interesting to find in their most ancient 
cosmogony, the proof of the common or- 
igin, and common early faith, of all the 
sons of men. 

These earliest Hindu writings are the 
product of an age after the second migra- 
tion into India. They were probably 
compiled in their present form, fourteen 
hundred years before Christ, from ancient 
documents then existing, f In these ven- 
erable books, Monotheism is strictly in- 
culcated. "There is in truth but one Dei- 
ty, the Supreme Spirit, the Lord of the 
universe, by whom the world was made." \ 

There was also no image and no visible 
type of worship. § "The chief of all du- 
ties is to obtain a knowledge of the one 
supreme God." | The substance of all 
created things was derived from the will 
of the Self-existing Cause. \ Water was 
the first element worked upon : " All was 

* Ibid. 

t Elphinstone, Hist, of India. 
X Prof. Wilson, Oxford Lectures. 
%Ibid. 

H Elphinstone, India. 

IT Wilson, Oxford Lectures. 



INDIA. 



8? 



darkness undiscernible as in a profound 
deep ; the self-existent God dispelled the 
gloom by his own glory : the waters are 
called his children, because he first moved 
upon them" * The God announces himself 
thus : " I am that which is, and He who 
must remain, am I." f God created man 
with an immortal soul, and an internal con- 
sciousness of right ; after death the soul 
expiates its errors by suffering. God gave 
men knowledge of letters, teaching their 
form and use in an audible voice from the 
city of God.$ He then gave man the 
Vedas to guide him. 

At last there remained upon earth only 
one pious king, and seven saints. The 
Universal Lord, designing to destroy the 
world, appeared to him saying, In seven 
days behold an ocean of death : but in 
the waves a large vessel shall come for 
thee : enter, with thy seven companions, 
accompanied by pairs of all brutes, and 
taking many herbs. § Shut in this spa- 
cious ark thou shalt realize my glory and 
goodness. Sativarata obeyed, and the 
flood being abated, he became the seventh 
Menu, and by him was the earth repeo- 
pled. 

Quite as curious is the story of Noah 
in his paternal priesthood; his accidental 
drunkenness ; his sleep ; the conduct of 
his children ; his blessing of two of his 
sons, and cursing Canaan ; and the divi- 
sion and peopling of the earth by the 
three, ] These facts are given almost in 

* Asiatic Res., Vol. I. 
t Ibid. 
\ Ibid. 
%Ibid. 

|| Asiatic Res., Vol. III. 



88 



BRICKS, FROM BABEL. 



Mosaic language. The Hindus held also 
the incarnation of the Divinity ; and 
though the earliest Vedas demand no 
sacrifices, they have the Cain-worship of 
Thank-offering. 

Thus we see, that whether the very 
first settlers in India were fugitive Chal- 
deans, or were Japhetites, from the Me- 
dian boundary, they, and the after-comers 
from Mesopotamia, held man's first tradi- 
tions, and God had not left himself with- 
out a witness in their hearts.* Besides 
these traces of the early revelation be- 
stowed upon the race, we have the later 
Babylonian ideas, and see growing out of 
the original Vedas, where much truth 
shone amid superstition and falsehood, a 
marvellous superstructure of paganism, 
horrible polytheism, cumbersome ritual, 
and shocking cruelties. The later writ- 
ings also have many of the mythological 
fables of Egypt and Greece, showing very 
early communication between these races. 

Greece, however, knew nothing of the 
enormous cycles and mysterious absorp- 
tions of the Indian creed. The Hellenes 
had the joyous court on Ida, with its hu- 
man loves and pleasures ; graceful and 
beautiful myths born of shining skies and 
seas, and a blooming garden land. 

India, the realm of the immense and 
terrible, had the profound slumber of 
Brahma, his awful loneliness, those myste- 
rious circles wherein all things proceed 
from and are lost in Brahma. The Indian 
mind rose to loftier altitudes in its search- 
ings after the unseen; it touched pro- 

*For much interesting information concerning 
India I am indebted to that patriarch of foreign 
missions, Dr. Duff. 



INDIA. 



89 



founder philosophies than Greece ; but 
its mysticism and self-absorption rend- 
ered it nearly useless in a world which 
Greece has so richly endowed. 

One great family of nations spreads 
from the Ganges to the Thames ; families 
of Asiatic origin, closely connected to- 
gether. Asiatic origin is asserted for 
these, not merely as we say that all tribes 
of the human family have an Asiatic 
origin, coming from theShinar plain ;* so 
the Ethiopians and American Indians, 
and Finns are of Eastern origin. Neither 
is the Eastern origin of these families con- 
sidered as within a historic period. The 
Goths, the Celts, the Slavs, the Greeks, 
— the Sanskrit groups, — dwelt once to- 
gether, as brothers ; had one common 
tongue ; kept together for centuries ; 
slowly separated ; and retain to this day 
affinities of language which have caused 
them to be classed under one name, as 
Indo-European.f The close relationship 
residing between the languages of these 
now widely separated nations was first 
noted by Sir William Jones, but was clearly 
given to the world in Schlegel's Essay on 
the Language and Philosophy of the Hin- 
dus. \ 

It is not likely that the migrations 
which peopled all Europe from North 
Germany to the Mediterranean, took place 
within any short period. We shall see 
that Javan moved with some despatch 
from Shinar into Greece ; but probably 
the other emigrants paused often on their 

* Prichard, Eastern Origin of Celtic Races, Ch. 
I., II. 

t Ibid., Latham's notes ; 73. 

\ Rawlinson, Bamftton Lectures, 1859. 



90 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



way ; hung long in Asia Minor ; now 
rushed forward, driven by some pressure, 
now ebbed back again like a refluent tide. 
We have seen the Mede bending to drink 
by the blue Danube : the Mede in whose 
ear the Halys had sung of a fitting limit 
to his westward course. And yet, again 
and again, out of India itself a new line 
of pilgrims passed toward the setting sun. 
Even so late as the fifteenth century of our 
era there came into Europe a new race 
of pilgrims, calling themselves Roma — 
the Gypsies — a strange and restless race ; 
no spot so fair as to detain them ; some 
will-o-wisp, unseen of other men, forever 
flying before them. Again and again do 
they pursue Atlantis round the world. 
These were India's latest wanderers ; 
black Hindus, the Persians called them, as 
they passed through Persia in their jour- 
neyings. Bazelgurs of Hindustan, they 
were proved to be ; and as we watch them 
in their never-ending march, we wonder 
how many tribes of their kindred of old 
came forth from Indian jungles, and from 
Median valleys, and Persian rose-gardens, 
and mingling with their predecessors in 
European forests, grew into the nations of 
to-day. 

Closely allied with the Indians in speech, 
cosmogony, and history were the an- 
cient Persians. Zend, the early language, 
shows the same origin as Sanskrit, that 
origin a tongue forever lost.* The lan- 
guage and writing of the Medes and 
Persians were nearly identical, f and very 
intimately connected with the Hindu 

* Prichard, Eastern Origin of Celtic Nations ; 
Latham's edition, with notes, 
t Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies, Vol. III. 



INDIA. 



9 



tongue and character. So was the relig- 
ion and tradition of the Persian identical 
with that of the Mede. We may call 
Elam and Madai two cousins, who have 
learned the same speech ; had the same 
history ; worshipped at the same altar ; 
and in after life established themselves 
near each other, continuing the early 
friendship. Probably no two branches of 
the Babel-divided family retained so 
many words, traits, and ideas in common 
as Elam and Madai. In fact, we find the 
mingled race claiming a distinction as 
Aryan, and despising its own Mongolian 
offshoot. 

The earliest Persian religion was 
Zoroastrianism, or simple Sketnism, for 
Zoroaster has been identified with Shem,* 
and long after this plain creed was over- 
grown with Magianism, the mountaineers 
of Persia held in their fastnesses, the re- 
ligion of their great ancestor.f The 
main idea of the earliest belief, was the 
adoration of one sole, supreme God, " the 
maker of heaven and earth " — Ormuzd. 
The worship of the sun appears but faintly 
in primitive Zoroastrianism. Good spirits, 
household genii, were also adored, and 
they had sacrifices and thank-offerings. 
Images of the gods were unknown. The 
primeval traditions are like those of 
Scripture. Ormuzd makes one man and 
woman, who live in peace in a garden. 
Ahriman, the evil spirit, plants a fatal 
tree in their abode, and sends a serpent to 
persuade them to eat of it. Woe follows ; 
man obeys Ahriman ; demons interfere 
with his peace. While there was a tradi- 

* See Bampton Lectures, 1859. 

t Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies, Vol. III. 



92 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



tion in Persia older, on the ground which 
it occupied, than Magianism, still Magian- 
ism itself was of the very first days after 
the flight from Shinar ; and its fire-worship 
was doubtless brought from the Babel 
plain. It is very interesting to trace in 
Magianism the growth of the hope of the 
World's Deliverer; and to see the Magi 
the first worshippers at the feet of the in- 
fant Christ.* 

No sons of Elam or Madai are men- 
tioned by the genealogist in the tenth 
chapter of Genesis. But knowing the 
vast numbers of the families of Cush in the 
first migration, and the extent at that day 
of Arab and Canaanite families, there is 
no difficulty in the supposition that the 
original Mongolian and Turanian families, 
spread out on the plateau of Central Asia 
from this period. 

* See Upham's Three Wise Men, and Star in 
the East. 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE CHILDREN OF GOMER. 

" His wavering bands, now fled in deep dismay 
By different routs, uncertain when they passed, 
Some sought the limits of the Eastern world ; 
Some where the craggy western coast extends, 
Sped to the regions of the setting sun." 

The second son of Japheth is, in the 
Mosaic genealogy of nations, called Ma- 
gog. We catch a glimpse of Magog in 
the prophecy of Ezekiel (38, 2-3 ; 39, 1) 
here, according to the rendering preferred 
by close critics : " Gog of the land of Ma- 
gog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech and 
Tubal. "* This word Gog is frequently 
used in the Old Testament as the name of 
a line of princes over Magog, as Pharaoh 
is over Egypt, f but in later periods Gog 
is coupled as a nation with Magog. Our 
concern, however, is with Magog, and we 
find that he is no other than that mighty 
and terrible race, the Scyths. No wilder, 
more cruel, tireless spirit marched out of 
Shinar, than this same Magog : he is the 
exponent of the wrath of Japheth, as 
Javan was of his genius, Gomer of his en- 
durance, and Madai of his restlessness. 
Magog directed his march northwest from 
Babel, and established himself above the 
Euxine and the Caspian Seas. Within 
some few centuries he found his brothers, 

* Smith and Clark's Bible Atlas. 
t Kalisch, Com. on Gen. 



94 



BRICKS FROM BABEL, 



Tubal and Meshech, south of him, and 
obligingly made them his vassals, and 
spreading his banner over them forced 
them to go and come at his will. 

Only a little later than this, Magog saw 
an extension of his boundaries, in Rosh, 
his descendant,* who pushed his uncle 
Gomer out of his habitation ; and when 
Gomer yielded to the aggressions of his 
nephew, Rosh sat down in his room. 
Here in Rosh, son of Magog, we get the 
first glimpse of that widely extended Rus- 
sian race, which within the last three cen- 
turies has extended and improved so rap- 
idly. From their valleys and vineyards, 
their orchards and corn-lands, the children 
of Gomer may make their Russian cousin 
welcome to the inheritance upon which he 
entered. The passing centuries have 
tamed Magog, the branch of the tree of 
life, which fell from Heaven into the bit- 
ter waters of striving nations, has subdued 
the fierceness and the war-passion of the 
Rosh, and instead of the old Scythic fury, 
and curse, we have civilization and free- 
dom and literature. Says Niebuhr : f 

" The account given by Herodotus of the mi- 
grations of the Scythians is strange and incredible. 
It is an undoubted fact that in the last period of 
Nineveh, the Scythians, perhaps a branch of those 
who had expelled the Cimmerians from their seats, 
came through the pass of Derbend, and for a con- 
siderable period ruled over Upper Asia." 

What the Saracens were to the nations 
of Europe were the Scyths to the Asiatic 
peoples. Each of these invading races 
were furious riders, sweeping over every 
upland, drinking of every stream, thunder- 

* Smith and Clark's Atlas, and Map I. 
t Led. on Anc. Hist., Vol. I., Lect. IV. 



THE CHILDREN OF GOMER. 9$ 



ing at every gate, greedy of gold. The 
Scyths devastated Media, overrode Pales- 
tine, depleted Egypt, conquered Cyax- 
ares, and were masters of Asia. It is a 
curious fact that Sir H. Rawlinsonuses the 
term Scythic and Hamitic indifferently,* 
calling the early Canaanites Scyths, be- 
cause they were Hamites, when the Scyths 
are in fact Japhethites, as Prof. Rawlinson 
himself remarks in his Toldoth Beni Noah. 
That Magog meant exactly these Scyths 
we have abundant proof. Josephus 
called Magog, the Scythians : so does 
Jerome regard them : Theodoret calls 
both Gog and Magog Scythian tribes, 
and thus the Arabian traditions hold them. 
The term Magog, or Scyth, has a very 
wide significance ; it refers not to one 
tribe but to a race, not to one settled na- 
tion, but to a mighty family of nations ; 
the meaning is broad, like that of Cush. 

Tiras, the last named son of Japheth, has 
been generally accepted as the ancestor 
of the Thracians. These found their 
home widely extended between the 
Halys, the Drave, and the Save. Out of 
Tiras, thus viewed, rose the mighty 
Goths,f and the Dacians. Tiras was in 
league with his eldest brother, Gomer, in 
many a wild sweep of warfare and panic 
of migration. Strabo tells us that when 
the Kimmerii went to ravage Asia Minor, 
the Thracians went with them. Thus the 
nations expended their energies in days 
when they had no railroads to build, and 

* See Journal of the Asiatic Society, Vol. XV. 

t Dr. Latham, however, considers that the Goths 
were of the Germans, thus from Gomer instead of 
Tiras. They are first mentioned by Pytheas in the 
days of Alexander the Great. 



9 6 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



no stock-market to gamble in, no Euro- 
pean policy to discuss, no balance of 
power to preserve ; when they had for 
weapons quiver on back and bow in hand, 
and could go to war without dragging 
about Mitrailleuse and Krupp cannon. 

Hitherto we have found the sons of 
Japheth lingering in their way, clinging 
to Asia Minor and the banks of the Eux- 
ine and Caspian Seas. We must follow 
in Gomer that broad belt of migration 
which filled all Central Europe, and passed 
into the British Isles ; the wide band of na- 
tions between the high northern races on 
the one side, and the sons of Javan along 
the dear shores of the Mediterranean Sea. 
The line of migration preferred by the 
earliest wanderers was from east to west. 
Northward and southward of the latitude 
of Armenia greater difficulties of travel 
assailed them, than upon the line of the 
broad plateau of Central Asia. Thus we 
see tides of migration sweeping backward 
and forward on this level. Now the clans 
are borne westward almost to the Black 
Forest, now they are carried eastward to 
the Himalayas.* 

The late and tedious development of 
the majority of the Japhetic nations was 
due to this unrest. A thousand years 
after the Dispersion, saw the kingdoms of 
Babylonia, Media, Persia, Egypt and As- 
syria risen to some degree of power, and 
in India and Greece were firmly planted 
the people who should there rise to re- 
nown. Ethiopia was in her prime, and 
still the sons of Gomer knew no rest. 
Every pestilence, war, famine, was suffi- 
cient to hurl them upon some new front- 

* J. Bryant, Anc. MythoL, Vol. IV. 



THE CHILDREN OF GOMER. 97 



ier, whence they should presently be car- 
ried away. Another thousand years and 
all the other Old World peoples are stately 
and renowned, princes in cities, mighty 
in war, glorious in art ; and still the chil- 
dren of Gomer and Magog and Tiras are 
haunters of jungles, warrior nomads. But 
now their migrations are ended, and they 
are in the lands where and whence they 
shall bear rule. 

When Gomer was dispossessed from his 
earliest abode, he probably retreated first 
into Northern Armenia ; * here Togarmah 
became the ancestor of the Armenians, 
and the nations of the Caucasus. The 
Phrygians, we are told by ancient histo- 
rians, were akin to, or identical with, the 
Armenians ; f their arms, speech, dress, 
appearance, and leaders, were the same. 
It is curious, too, to notice the record of 
their earliest settlement and dispossession. 
They had been in Europe, were driven out 
and returned to Asia, and after this re- 
trograde movement, the Phrygians went 
forth of Armenia. To the Phrygians 
the ancient mythologists assign Pelops, 
and the founding of Troy. 

North of Togarmah, his brother Ash- 
kenaz tarried for a time ; but desiring 
wider domains, departed for the west ; 
and the Iberians, who had occupied what 
is now Georgia, filled Aquitaine, Corsica, 
Spain, and to this day the Biscayans and 
the Basques, relics of the oldest inhabit- 
ants of Europe, retain their early tongue, 
which they used in Asia Minor, and 
brought to their European home, long 

* Smith, Bible Diet., Vol. III. 
t Eudoxus ; Strabo ; Herodotus. Also Rawlin- 
son's Herodotus. 



9S 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



before the Celts and the Germans had 
come out of Asia.* The Japhetic Iberi- 
ans moved along the northern coast of 
the Mediterranean^ while the Phoenician 
children of Aram % travelled along the 
southern coast of that same sea. When 
the Phoenicians reached the Pillars of 
Hercules, and established themselves in 
Spain, Shem and Japheth, as in the 
world's yet earlier day, were dwelling in 
one home. Thus also, out of the popu- 
lous East, the Umbrians, and later the 
Etruscans § came into northern Italy ; 
tribes of Japheth, destined to reach their 
maximum, and perish, before his greater 
sons had grown into nations. 

The Iberians found enemies in the 
Ligurians, another very early clan of 
Gomerites. These Ligurii are said to have 
been Celts in all but language ; a distinct 
people and yet differing little in appear- 
ance and manner.] We may not be 
wrong in considering these Ligurians, 
a branch of Gomerites, who at the onset 
of Rosh moved not east but west, divid- 
ing thus early from the parent stock. 

* Prichard, Physical History of Man. William 
von Humboldt, in Mithridates. 

t Piazzi Smyth, Age of Intellectual Man, Ch. XII. 

% Kenrick's Phoenicia, Ch. III. 

§ George Smith in his last and fatal journey found 
a city and monuments in the plains lying west of 
the Euphrates, that were Hittite and yet Etruscan. 
If he had lived longer he would have developed 
and endeavored to establish the theory that the 
Hittites were driven before Joshua to North Africa 
(as certain monuments show), and afterwards 
moved into Italy, becoming the early Etruscans. 
Thus the Etruscans would be Hamitic and not 
Japhetic. The Etruscan tongue and monuments 
have as yet found no interpreter. See Appendix I. 

I Strabo, Lib. II. 



THE CHILDREN OF GOMER. 99 



And we are the rather inclined to this 
opinion, by the account of the battle of 
the Ambrones — who were true Celts — 
with the Ligurii. When the Ambrones 
raised their battle-shout the Ligurians 
caught it up, and thundering it back on 
their foes, claimed it as their own, the 
ancient inheritance of their fathers.* 

Ashkenaz has been called by some who 
have followed the Rabbins, the ancestor 
of the Germans, and Riphath of the Celts, 
but the ablest critics have denied this as- 
sumption, and proved its fallacy on many 
grounds. Riphath, the second son of 
Gomer, has been variously understood as 
referring to the Hyperboreans — the dwell- 
ers on the most northern mountains 
known to the ancients ; and, following 
Josephus, of the Paphlagonians. 

After their first unsatisfactory attempt 
to fix an abode in Europe, the main body 
of the Gomerites turned their faces to the 
east, and pressed on through the Scythian 
Highlands, until they came to the North 
of India. Here they are lost in moun- 
tains and jungles for centuries. Miiller, 
from the Indo-European languages, builds 
up a charming picture of a family and 
pastoral life, homes, simple arts, peace 
and piety. Whether these blessings were 
indeed their heritage, who now can say 
positively? All we know from recent re- 
searches is, that they remained in Asia 
until their language was thoroughly dyed 
with Sanskrit — the wonderful tongue of 
Gomer's Eastern brothers. 

At last came the hour of their disturb- 
ance. Was it war, or plague, or famine, 
or celestial portent, or a prophecy from 
* Plutarch, Life of Caius Mar ins. 



ioo BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



their bards that woke from its ages of 
slumber that instinct of migration?* 
Strange as was that rousing, and depart- 
ure of a race, it is no more wonderful 
than the direction which they took, turn- 
ing backward on the track of their ances- 
tors, and passing over such weary wastes, 
to reach their destined home. We can 
only explain this by a divine impression, 
or drawing, some secret rapport between 
their souls, and that pre-ordained abode. 

One great wave of this migration rolled 
out of the East, and broke along the line 
of the Black Forest, the Alps, the Rhine : 
the fathers of the Germans were in their 
final place ! 

Another long pause : the energies of a 
race gathering for an exodus. Again the 
billow grows and rushes westward; it di- 
vides along the way, and the mountains 
of Galatia receive their settlers. f But 
this is as a mere foam-jet flung off a mighty 
roller before it reaches the strand. The 
Celts press on, and pour their families as 
a deluge upon all the west of Europe. 
They fill Spain, and unite with the old 
Iberians; they override the Basques in 
France ; and for Italy, and for Caesar, is 
prepared the nation of the Gauls. The 
family of the Belgse fill their fertile plains, 
and into Britain, " last land of the world," 
the last great offshoot of the Indo-Euro- 
peans, makes his way. 

Numberless tribes now swarmed over 
Europe. The Phoenicians crept along 
the Eastern coast, and traded there in tin 
and amber. The Romans now quailed 

* Bunsen, Christianity a?id Mankind : Vol. III. 
t Thus Paul's Epistle to the Galatians is an 
epistle addressed to Celts. 



THE CHILDREN OF GOMER. 101 



before the onset of Goth, Celt, and Ger- 
man, and fled at the glow of their fires; and 
anon defeated them in terrible battles, 
and now taught them to build cities and 
fprts ; now sowed their language with 
Greek and Latin words ; now gave them 
new dress, and new weapons ; now made 
them slaves, allies, conquerors. 

Among all these struggling barbarians 
two families of Gomerites emerge, and 
take clear shape before us — the German 
and the Celt. Physically these sons of 
one great father resembled each other; 
they towered above the children of Javan 
like giants. They were fair-faced and 
blue-eyed : the Celt's yellow locks fell 
low about his mighty shoulders; the Ger- 
man's hair was red, (when not red enough 
he dyed it to better the hue) and he 
twisted it on top of his head, the one or- 
nament wherein his soul delighted. The 
German tied a plain tunic about his neck, 
and was dressed ; the Celt decorated him- 
self in brilliant colors, and wore rings 
and chains of gold. Old and young, men 
and women, of these two races glowed 
with the furor of Mars : slaughter was 
the joy of their souls : life without 
strength and beauty was odious to them ; 
and when old age or disease obtained the 
mastery over them, they took the sword 
and sent themselves by its edge to Wal- 
halla. 

Of the two, the German was by far the 
better man : the German was honest, 
chaste, religious : he had domestic rela- 
tions and sympathies ; he was faithful in 
his friendships, and memories, and plain 
in his tastes.* The Celt (one cannot do 

* Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, Ch. I. 



102 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



him the honor to call him beastly) was a 
savage, equal to the most horrible South 
Sea Islander who has ever been dis- 
covered. A fiend painted blue, wearing 
his hair in an hundred knots ; without a 
coat, who would have devoured you, his 
descendant, if it had been possible for you 
to have met him.* The Celt was " with- 
out natural affection," he had no domes- 
tic decency nor privacy ; no chastity; no 
pity ; no honor : his one delight was 
blood ; his soul was full of terrible super- 
stitions ; he offered human sacrifices, and 
ate human flesh. 

There are those who tell us that man is 
an appreciating animal, ever from some 
good force within himself rising higher 
and higher in creation's scale ; thus, mon- 
keys grew better and better until they be- 
came, by scarce perceptible degrees, men ; 
and men from gross estate have risen 
into Homers and Miltons, singing, and 
Newtons and Herschels at the shrine of 
science ; and great philosophers putting 
the climax on acquisition by discovering 
whence they came ! So we have the 
pleasing expectation of increasing out of 
our own strength, until we become those 

" High Intelligences fair 
Who dwell above our mortal state." 

But we cannot understand how, while 
improving so marvellously into a vastly 
higher order, this being retrograded so 
often and so far, behaving worse than the 
brute, and devouring his own kind. Such 
a cannibal monster was the Celt, when on 
his destructive career he clamored in the 
wilds of Europe, driving out those peace- 

* Dr. Parker, speaking of missionary results. 



THE CHILDREN OF GOMER. 103 



able possessors sprung from his own an- 
cient stock, who had for many centuries 
disputed with savage beasts for the pos- 
session of the forests. The Eskaldunes 
had held their own against the beasts, 
they died before the Celt.* 

When we consider the German and 
Celtic races, families of Gomer, who lived 
for ages on the same Turanian plain in 
Asia, we shall perhaps wonder at the 
moral and religious difference between 
them. The purity of the Germans, the 
simplicity of their sacred rites, and the 
entire absence of human sacrifice — unless 
indeed we must admit an occasional in- 
stance of the kind, after long intercourse 
with other races — f stand in singular con- 
trast to the vice and cruel superstitions 
of the Celt. The difficulty grows less 
when we see that there is a difference in 
the period of the migrations, and when 
in considering the Druidism of the Celt, 
we find it closely allied to the supersti- 
tions of India, after the primitive faith of 
that great land had disappeared. The 
vileness of Celtic private life is that of 
the Indian Nairs ; their superstitions are 
those of the Brahmins, mixed with Scy- 
thian ideas.J The remains of Druidical 
buildings point to the same origin.§ The 
Germans had no Druids, neither had the 
Goths ; J Druidism was the Celt's last ac- 
quisition before leaving his retreat be- 
tween the Indians and Persians, and he 
carried with him in his way not only 

* Bunsen, Phil, of Univ. Hist., Vol. I. 
t Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, Vol. I. 
Ch. I. 

% Maurice, Indian Antiquities. 

§ R. Burrow, Asiatic Researches^ <A. II. 

I Comprehensive Hist, of England, Vol. I. 



104 BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



Persic and Indian speech, but Magian 
and Buddhist practices.* 

Out of such strange material as these 
Gomerite Celts and Germans, the Lord 
designed to raise the ruling nations of the 
world's latter day: — Frank and Gaul, 
Norman, Saxon, Belgian, Frisian, they 
were welded together. Conquest and 
treaty, war and marriage mingled and re- 
mingled the blood of each and all. One 
Revelation lit their minds, chastened 
their passions, subdued their asperities, 
united their hopes, and directed their 
energies. When we see Providence, hav- 
ing laid aside Cush and Asshur, Madai, 
Mizraim, Eber and Javan, now managing 
the world by these sons of Gomer, who 
were once possessed of a legion of devils, 
but who now sit at the feet of Jesus, 
clothed, and in their right minds, we can 
only say, " What hath God wrought ! " 

It now remains but to glance at the 
cosmogony of these Gomerites ; and as 
might be expected from their history, we 
find it mingled with the myths of the 
many nations with whom they had suc- 
cessively dwelt. As the Persians had 
Peris and Djinns, the Cymri had Nornes 
and Gnomes. The Germans believed in 
one mighty All-Father, too sublime to 
dwell in human temples ; too great to be 
comprehended ; who dwells in the skies, 
rides on clouds, breathes in storms, speaks 
in thunder, and can be approached with 
awe and humility in the silence of the 
forests. Like all other principal nations 
of the world, the Celts and Germans — the 
Northern Europeans — had two marked 
stages in their religious belief : the first, 
* Ibid. 



THE CHILDREN OF GOMER. 105 



simple and to a degree pure ; the second 
full of fantastic and poetic notions, and 
encumbered with ritual. 

The main features of the primary faith 
of the Gomerites, we shall first sketch in 
few words. They held the eternity and 
unchangeableness of their supreme God,* 
who had no corporeal form. This deity 
demanded of men that they should be 
honest and brave ; that they should fear 
the gods, and recognize them as the dis- 
posers of all events. After death there 
would be two states ; joy for the religious 
and brave, joy extended to deification of 
those dying by the sword ; and torment 
unending for the base. Upon this simple 
belief a change passed, with the last Indo- 
Scythic migration. Temples were built, 
Gods were multiplied ; sacrifices in- 
creased ; festivals became numerous. 
Agreeably to the character of these stern 
races, the myths, even when borrowed 
from the South, became in their hands 
rugged and vigorous, rather than beauti- 
ful. There is a grace lingering about 
Baldur, and Freya of the shining hair; 
but the lowering brow of Odin, and the 
swinging hammer of Thor, the uproar of 
Walhalla, and the revellings of Asgard, 
fill the chief places in northern mythol- 
ogy. The supreme Gods were three — 
Odin, Freya, and Thor. This Triad of 
Gods runs through all mythologies, as 
their reminiscence of the revelation of a 
Trinity. The second person in the my- 
thologies is feminine, and it is curious to 
trace this being's likeness to Wisdom as 
described in Proverbs. Loki was the evil 
deity, from whom sprung the Great Ser- 
* Mallet, Northern Antiquities. 



io6 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



pent, Midgard and Hel. This tradition 
is very significant. 

The cosmogony began with Chaos, " a 
vast herbless, seedless abyss."* A light 
arose, and creation came slowly from 
nothingness. The first people were a 
man and a woman, who had three sons. 
A deluge came, wherein all perished ex- 
cept one man, and his family, who es- 
caped in a bark. The first man's name 
was Askus, his wife's Embla. The Eddas 
had also prophecy, akin to the Apoca- 
lypse. An age of evil shall dawn — the 
winter of the world ; the great Dragon 
shall bestir himself , the Wolf Fenris shall 
open his mouth ; demons shall attack the 
Gods ; Hemidal shall clang his trumpet ; 
Odin, clad in resplendent helmet and cui- 
rass, shall lead the fray ; fire shall wrap all 
things ; a new heaven and a new earth 
shall be born ; the just shall dwell in a 
City of the Gods, more shining than the 
sun : He who governs and decrees all 
things, shall come forth of his lofty habi- 
tation, to render strict justice unto all, 
and shall set up kingdoms which shall en- 
dure forever. 

If only the Edda had contained this 
singular prophecy, one might attribute it 
to some Christian teaching of the first 
centuries ; but the untouched pages of 
the Volnspa hold it also, and fix it as an 
early tradition, warning, and promise, 
planted deep in the souls of the fathers 
of the race, in their Asian home, when 
Shem was chief patriarch of all the na- 
tions, when Noah stood among men, and 
when the Dispersion had not yet taken 

* This Cosmogony is taken from translations of 
the Eddas and Voluspa in the British Museum. 



THE CHILDREN OF GOMER. 107 



place. In the " Ship of the Gods " the 
memory of the Ark is preserved : the 
trials of Thor, his fishing to catch the 
Great Serpent, Hermode's journey to 
Hel to rescue Baldur, and the flight of 
Loki, bear traces of the promise of a De- 
liverer, cherished by the Shemites, as 
their birthright. The " Twilight of the 
Gods " and the last conflagration, were 
themes not dissimilar to those which 
Enoch preached before the flood, and 
which must have remained in the Noahic 
family : The reminiscence of God's sign- 
manual, the " bow in the cloud," was 
beautifully preserved in the Rainbow 
Bridge between the gods and men, which 
reaches from the throne of the All-Vater, 
to the hearthstones of mortals. There is 
a city of the gods, and many glorious 
habitations ; but the way is paved in part 
with celestial fire, lest if the road were 
too easy, the demons and evil men might 
climb upon it into glory. 

This then is the marvellous cosmogony 
of the North. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE IONIAN LAND. 

" Not now, nor yesterday, but always thus 
These have endured — 

The ancient source from whence they came, 
unknown." 

Soph. Antig. 

Of all the sons of Japheth, Javan left 
Shinar most richly dowered with possibili- 
ties. Javan's was the heritage of beauty ; 
physical beauty was as much the rule 
among the Greeks as it was the exception 
among other nations. To match this 
corporeal beauty of Ion, a marvellous 
beauty was prepared in the region to 
which he was irresistibly and mysteriously 
drawn. The land of Hellas possessed the 
beauty of the sea clasping and surround- 
ing it ; it was full of silver streams ; there 
were mountains like Ida, and vales as 
Tempe ; all vegetation throve there, 
from the beech on Thessalian heights, to 
the graceful Southern Palm : all fruits 
were there for the gathering, from the 
hardy pine-nut to the fragrant lime and 
citron. Flowers so wreathed the bright 
shores that the land was deemed the 
birthplace of Flora. So abundantly did 
the grain bring forth, that this was es- 
teemed the favorite home of Demeter. 
So richly did the vine yield its fruitage 
that Bacchus was supposed forever to be 
wandering over the sunny slopes. 



THE IONIAN LAND. 



109 



Thus the beauty of his home and of 
his fellows conspired to beautify the mind 
of Ion, which had in itself been greatly 
gifted with richness of imagination and 
capacity for refined and accurate speech. 
The Aryan tongue, which by Indus devel- 
oped into Sanskrit, and beyond Halys 
was Zend, along the Rhine grew into 
rich and rugged German ; by fair Ache- 
lous became that melodious and philo- 
sophic tongue, wherein the Masonian 
bard poured forth his lofty strains, and 
which equally fitted those diviner themes 
of which the Apostles treated — the Gos- 
pel of the Grace of God. 

The way ordained for Javan was not long 
nor difficult. When the fiat of dispersion 
rolled along the Babylonian savannas, 
Ion, with his sons about him, set his face 
to the West, the track of empire and glory 
moving ever with the Sun. Three great 
standards followed in his train. Hellas* 
came first, his glorious eldest born, who 
should rise among the nations as the 
morning, and be worshipped as a god. 
The hosts of Javan were doubtless in 
their numbers proportioned to the armies 
of their brethren, the other grandsons 
of Noah. The earth's population at the 
date of the Dispersion has been variously 
estimated. Given the great length of the 
life-period, and the favorable climatic and 
physical conditions of the early race the 
the numbers may have been very great, 
affording a large following to each section 
of the migrating family. Javan found his 
home in Ionia, called from his name of 

* Kalisch, Crit. Com. on Gen. Rawlinson, 
Toldoth Beni Noah, prefers to see Elishah as 
Aeolian Greeks. 



I io BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



Ion. Elishah found his satisfaction in 
the Peloponnesus.* 

Tarshish, the second son of Javan, has 
occasioned almost as much disputing as 
his far-off cousin Phut. Some hold that 
Tarshish is nothing else than Tartessus in 
Spain, and argue this from notices in the 
Old Testament of this trading-port, and 
from the accounts of its exports : Tar- 
tessus- — lost before Strabo's day — the 
wealthy city beside " Silver-bedded Guad- 
alquiver " — has been attributed to Greeks, 
Ethiopians, and Indians ; and has been 
variously placed in all the three quarters 
of the globe known to the ancients.f 
Rawlinson argues for Tarsus in Cilicia, 
and his reasoning, though from slight 
data, seems the most convincing.^: 

Kittim, the third of the Ionidae, found a 
most fair abode. Cyprus, rich in minerals, 
gold, silver, copper ; abundant in forests 
for ship-building ; full of harbors ; pro- 
lific in jewels ; in whose caves emerald, 
jasper, agate, and diamond blazed. Cy- 
prus was called the land of Yavnan by 
the Assyrians, i-e., " Isle of the Greeks." 
Later, its wonderful advantages tempted 
the greedy sons of Aram, the trading 
Phoenicians, and they usurped possession. 
From Phoenicia the early Cypriotes re- 
ceived their favorite divinity, Astarte — 
Venus. The last named branch of the 
Javanic family, also entered upon an 
island. Dodanim, otherwise named Ro- 
danim, went into Rhodes,§ " Land of 

* Kalisch, Com. on Gen. 

t Eusebius places Tarshish in Spain ; Josephus 
in Cilicia ; Knobel decides for Tuscany. 

% Toldoth Bent Noah. 
%Ibid. 



THE IONIAN LAND. 



in 



Roses," rich in beauty, opulent in traffic, 
mighty in sway. There are those, how- 
ever, who find in Dodanim, the earliest 
occupation of Italy.* 

But besides these great tribes occupying 
important lands, smaller families fell out 
on the line of march, from the main body 
of the migrating host, and fixed them- 
selves in such tracts of country as pleased 
them best ; thus one party were estab- 
lished in Magnesia by Peneus ; and 
another by the Mseander. 

The earliest name for the Ionic settlers 
was Pelasgi, and many historians have 
sought to find in these people of the ante- 
historic times a distinct race from the 
Greeks of the later period. Prichard f has, 
however, sufficiently proved the fallacy 
of this opinion. The Greek historians 
recognized no period when their people 
had not been in Greece. They believed 
themselves created on and for the soil. 
In their myths, however, we find the in- 
dubitable traces, and first confessions of 
their migrations. Thus, Pelops comes 
over the waters, with the horses of Posei- 
don ; Aphrodite is born of the billows, 
and floats to the shore ; Cadmus is Greek, 
but a Greek from Asia.;): A land so 
favored by nature, early attracted settlers 
from neighboring territories — we find the 
Phoenicians taking advantage of its fine 
harbors ; the Egyptians also sent forth 
colonists who seized possession of the 
Acropolis — Athens — and introduced the 
worship of Neith — Athene, Minerva. 

Doubtless the earliest centuries of 

* Kalisch, Crz't. C07n. on Gen. 

t Prichard, Phys. Hist, of Man., Vol. II. 

X Curtius, Hist, of Greece, Book I. 



112 



BRICKS. FROM BABEL. 



Greece were a period of great crudeness 
and barbarism. The very fertility of the 
soil which nourished its sons almost with- 
out labor, and kept remote that painful 
need which is the parent of arts, tended 
to lower rather than raise the status of 
the first colonists. But Hellas was not 
of a spirit to fall into permanent degrada- 
tion, like the sons of Ham. There came 
a time of rebound, the nation mounted in 
the scale of civilization, more rapidly 
than it had sunk : the Ionians became the 
rivals of the Phoenicians in navigation ; 
of the Egyptians in architecture ; of the 
Assyrians in war; of the Hindus in the 
exquisite beauty of speech ; and Hellas 
soared alone to lofty heights of art and 
poetry, and stood before men as the first- 
born and prophet of the gods. 

The further back we go in the Theog- 
ony of the Greeks, the simpler does it 
become.* The Pelasgi, like the early 
Germans and Persians, worshipped one 
supreme God, without either images or 
temples; pervading Zeus who dwelt in 
^Ether, and whose ione altars crowned 
the mountain tops, where standing be- 
fore mysterious fires, the simple Pelasgian, 
with chaste rites, adored a god whom he 
styled Supreme, Merciful, Pure, Unchang- 
able, Just, an Unknown God. And when, 
with the advancing corruptions of the 
later years, the Greeks had borrowed new 
deities from every land where their feet 
had trodden, when they had made a god 
of every secret of nature, and had deified 
their hero dead, there was still seen 
among their shrines and temples the 
solemn witness to their early light : the 
* Heeren, Ancient Greece, Ch. II. 



THE IONIAN LAND. 



"3 



altar of the Unknown God, whom igno- 
rantly they worshipped, and whom Paul 
declared unto them. 

Out of Greece went numerous colonies, 
one of these destined to become the rival 
of the mother-land, and in time its con- 
queror. The nations of Italy were many 
of them fugitives, or explorers from 
Greece. Rome, mistress first of all Italy, 
and then of the world, was a true son of 
Greece, a son whose ruder land and less 
restrained youth developed a more rug- 
ged and less refined maturity. Greece, 
like a good parent, taught this child his 
letters, bestowed upon him a knowledge 
of arts ; and as he grew older sent a mas- 
ter to instruct him in grammar, and to 
train him in song. He taught himself to 
fight. Beside all the goodly Levant, from 
Tarsus along Peloponnesus, through the 
radiant isles ; in Epirus, over the beauti- 
ful Adriatic, upon sun-bright Trinacria, 
and across the vine and olive-loved hills, 
and the fruit and corn-bearing plains of 
masterful Italy, extended the sceptre of 
Japheth's most brilliant son. In Alex- 
ander, Greece conquered a world ; and in 
her speech, she pervaded more lands than 
any other people save the Hindus and 
the English. 

We pause for awhile to gather out of 
the Greek myths the tradition of those 
great events in the history of humanity, 
which have been preserved faithfully in 
the early chapters of Genesis. The 
Greeks had no such immense cycles, and 
successions of evolutions and absorptions, 
as entranced the Hindu scholar, and ap- 
pear in a less marvellous form in the 
Scandinavian mythology. Beauty rather 
8 



114 BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



than immensity attracted Hellas. He 
preferred the philosophy of things which 
he saw, to vague dreams of pre-human 
ages. It was of small moment to the 
Greek, whether Chaos had settled into 
form, and been swept by fire., and ravaged 
by water, five or five thousand times; but 
he was interested to account for the van- 
ishing of bloom and growth ; the mourn- 
ing of Nature yearly ; for the death-sleep 
and winter of the world. For him no 
Brahma woke and slumbered, but Pluto 
stole Persephone, and great Demeter 
wept. 

The Greeks recognized three great 
abodes.* Olympos — the heavens, home of 
the gods ; Earth — the place of men ; and 
Hades — the abode of the dead. But 
Hades had two states : Elysium for the 
good, and Tartarus for the evil — corre- 
sponding to Paradise and Hell. Unlike 
the gods of the Northern races, the Greek 
gods were immortal. The cosmogony 
began with Chaos. Water came next, 
and being divided, Earth appeared, and 
the Firmament to over-arch Earth. 

There came first a golden race, who 
dwelt in fellowship with the gods. To 
these other races, of long life — being chil- 
dren for a century — succeeded. Men 
grew continually worse ; Justice with- 
drew " the glory of her face." Eve is re- 
membered in Pandora, who — made of 
Earth and Water, the first woman — 
opens, impelled by curiosity, a jar wherein 
are hidden all human ills. The flood is 
recorded in the story of Deucalion and 
Pyrrha, whom Zeus instructed to make 

* The Mythology, Edited by T. Keightly, fol- 
lowed as best authority. 



THE IONIAN LAND. 



and provision an ark wherein they should 
be safe, when Zeus poured waters forth 
to drown the world. As with the Chal- 
deans, this ' world ' is but a part of the 
Earth ; the Greeks had a Greek Flood, 
as the Chaldeans a Babylonian one. The 
Ark rested on a mountain ; Deucalion 
issuing forth adored Zeus ; and at his 
prayer the Earth was replenished with 
men. The Latin writers took a broader 
view, and declared for an universal del- 
uge. The building of Babel and the 
Dispersion has been traced in the story 
of the wars of the Titans. Japheth lived 
for his Greek descendants in Iapetos, head 
of mankind. 

These myths do not stand in what we, 
in the light of Biblical story, would call 
their proper order ; the tradition doubles 
upon itself, and wanders hither and 
thithen This is only to be expected 
where, for some long time, the records of 
their past were but orally preserved. 

The Greeks did not take the knowledge 
of letters with them, in their first migra- 
tion from the East. Letters were the 
divine gift to the Shemites,* and by 
them were dispensed to the rest of the 
world. Thus Egypt had characters un- 
doubtedly Semitic ; India had its letters 
from Elam ; and Greece received the 
boon of writing from the Phoenicians, 
sons of Aram. Nor were they unready 
to acknowledge the boon. Cadmus, they 
say, came from Asia, and taught the Hel- 
lenes written characters. Yet though 
they derive Cadmus from Asia, he is a 
Greek ; and this points to the delay of 
part of the migrating Greek host, on the 
* Keightley, Hist, of Greece. 



n6 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



coast of Cilicia, where they learned let- 
ters and navigation from the Phoenicians, 
and carried this rich knowledge to their 
brethren in Greece. Javan is preserved 
in the Greek myths as Jason, and with 
him is united Medea, daughter of the 
king of Colchis — the Grecian's fading 
memory of cradle days when Javan and 
Madai were children in the tent of Ja- 
pheth. 

Like all other mythologies, that of the 
Greeks possesses a great Serpent, a foe to 
man ; and a race of giants, of evil na- 
ture, born of the daughters of men. The 
tales of the prowess of the early colo- 
nists caused them to be esteemed a 
race of surpassing strength and stature. 
They existed in the memory of their 
children as the Cyclopes, who lived rude- 
ly, subdued beasts, forests, elements ; 
wrought in mid-earth, and worked won- 
ders. From these forefathers the earliest 
remains of architecture are called Cyclo- 
pean, and the structures thus designated 
point back to a very remote antiquity, 
contemporary with that of the early 
Chaldean and Assyrian remains, and some 
of the first Egyptian monuments. These 
Cyclopean buildings were immense 
mounds, put together without cement, and 
heaped with earth : they were burial places, 
and monuments to heroes.* They are 
to be found in Argolis, Arcadia, Bceotia, 
and Epirus. The early Italians also 
created them in the territories of the 
Hernicans, the ^Eginians, and Volscians ; 
and they are also to be found wherever in 
Asia Minor Javan rested. 

After this glance at the Cosmogony and 
* Keightley, Hist, of Greece. 



THE IONIAN LAND. 



117 



Theogony of the Greeks, we come to the 
following propositions concerning their 
Theology:* 1. The gods were superior 
beings, fashioned like men, but deathless 
and exempt from mutation. 2. They 
rule men and nature, and ordain fates. 
3. Their supreme control reaches not 
only to things external, but to thought 
and emotion. 4. To the gods belong ex- 
traordinary operations in nature, and in 
human affairs. 5. The gods have one 
supreme king, Zeus, or Jove. 6. Zeus 
rewards the good, and chastises the 
evil. 7. Men and gods may a long 
while proceed in actions contrary to the 
will of Zeus ; but when the destined 
years are filled, he brings " their violent 
dealings down on their own pate." 8. 
The gods are omnipotent and omniscient 
in theory ; but practically they can be 
deceived (though this may be explained 
by the tenor of the preceding proposition). 
9. The gods are excitable, jealous, cruel ; 
in fact, very low in moral character. 10. 
But to the good and reverential the gods 
are tender and bountiful. 11. Worship is 
due the gods from men ; sacrifice is also to 
be offered, especially of thank-offering and 
first-fruits. 12. There is a wide difference 
between good and evil in human con- 
duct ; man must bear the burden of his 
sins; retribution follows crime. 13. The 
soul is immortal : common crimes are pun- 
ished in this world, and spirits, purified 
by trouble, enter Elysium. There are 
great crimes, dooming to eternal Tartarus. 

This, then, was the son of Javan and his 
creed, before the advent of our Lord. 

*See a valuable article on Homeric Theology, by 
Prof. Blackie, in the Classical Museum, Vol. VII. 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE POLAR RACES. 

" Farthest removed 
Of all their kindred gods, the Titans dwell 
Beyond the realms of Chaos dark." 

We have now followed the course of 
migration across the centre of Europe, 
and along the southern coast. 

A peculiar race of people occupies the 
great ice-bound circle around the Nor- 
thern Pole, inhabiting Humanity's last 
outposts. We find these kindred people 
in many families, and of different names, 
yet closely resembling each other in 
their chief characteristics. Every coun- 
try about the polar basin claims them; 
and the man and his dog dwell where 
courageous Nature has yielded to de- 
spair, unable there to fashion or sustain 
a blade of grass. 

These Northern races are mentioned 
by the earliest historians ; accounts of 
them are full of fable, and provoke a 
smile. Some ancient writers call them Ich- 
thyophagi, — " Fish-eaters," — and carefully 
describe how their door-posts and rafters 
are the enormous bones of whales ; their 
mortars are the vertebrae of the same 
fish ; their weapons, domestic utensils, 
food, all taken from — fish. But we hear 
of them under descriptions far more for- 
eign to fact. They were called Hyperbo- 
reans, dwellers beyond the North-wind, 



THE POLAR RACES. 



119 



and as such free from his chilling incur- 
sions. They lived far North in " isles of 
light," which floated forever on sunny seas ; 
they were nobler than other men, and 
akin to gods. Harmony, beauty, peace, 
unvexed comfort, were their inheritance. 

This is surely a description far enough 
from the reality of that frozen people, 
living in huts of ice and snow, cowering 
over a smoky lamp, their only glimmer of 
fire, and enduring six months of darkness. 
Out of this bitter north there had doubt- 
less drifted the story of the long polar 
day, the marvellous tale of a land where 
the sun did not set. If any one in those 
long gone ages had crept, an explorer, 
into those farthest shores, he had done 
so in the Arctic day. He saw " no night 
there," and hence his tale. To continued 
day Southern nations would assign con- 
tinued warmth, vegetation, beauty. 
From time immemorial these northern 
races — bankrupt of almost every good — 
have had a superabundance of self-con- 
ceit, and have styled themselves MEN, par 
excellence. Here again the genial South- 
rons may have taken the boast for un- 
doubted fact ; and out of it they con- 
structed their story of these god-like dwell- 
ers in sunny seas. But what is the origin 
of this race ? whence its descent ? where 
its first cradle ? what the dim and distant 
traces of its far-off history? What are 
its relics of the early faith, and common 
traditions of the unseparated primitive 
family of man ? 

Once more we look to Asia. As a great 
number of nations have been taken 
together and classed as Indo-Europe- 
ans, this class embracing such a wide 



120 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



diversity as Hindus, Germans, Celts, 
Greeks, etc., so another great family has 
been massed in all its branches under the 
name of Finns or Ugrians, this name not 
referring merely to the natives of Finland, 
but to a great number of cognate tribes, 
as the Basques, Iberians, Scandinavians, 
Lapps, Magyars, Samoides, and others. 
One characteristic of these nations is that 
they cleave to the coasts, and never move 
far inland. Sir John Richardson calls 
them " the littoral peoples." Says Nor- 
ton, " The race of the circumpolar regions 
is a distinct people, the Finns, the Lapps, 
and the Esquimaux." " These have not 
shown a desire to penetrate continents, 
but rather retreat before civilization," re- 
marks Foster. Dall, living in Alaska, no- 
ticed these tribes as distinct in dialect and 
characteristics from the other tribes of 
that country, and called them Orarians, 
or Shore-men. 

We have seen that Magog, the second 
son of Japheth, represents the Scythians. 
These spread over the great Siberian 
plain, and the heights of the Altai range. 
From them, in their dividings, came the 
Turks.* As the Persians called their 
chief plateau Iran, hence the term Aryan, 
representing the families who branched 
thence ; so the word Turanian has been 
taken to express those dialects in Asia, 
Europe, America and Oceanica, which are 
neither Semitic, Aryan nor Chinese. The 
primary characteristic of these Turanians 
is that they are nomadic; only when 
mingled and impressed with other stock 
will they become citizens or agricultur- 
ists. These Scythic Turanians parted 
* Latham, 



THE POLAR RACES. 



121 



into various families, the most prominent 
of which are the Mongols, the Malays 
and the Finns, if we include as Finns all 
the races just enumerated under that 
name.* 

Here we find, in the Altai territory, 
several families of cousins, and for the 
present we devote our attention to the 
Northern, or Finnic, household. All the 
Turanians were less symmetrically and per- 
fectly developed, physically and mentally, 
than the Aryans, f Their domestic life 
was debased ; their language imperfect ; 
their religious ideas were peculiarly 
gross ; they were hunters and fishers, with 
no tendency toward rising into the do- 
main of art and manufactures : they were 
also destitute of letters, as indeed were 
the Aryans.^ These people were tumuli- 
builders, exercising their penchant in the 
rudest fashion, without use of tools of 
any kind of metal. The most widely 
spread of these families were the Ugri- 
ans, hence, Ugorians, Ogres ; for indeed, 
the precious horror of the ancient story- 
teller, the central terror of the juvenile 
chronicle, the leading character preserved 
in charming fantasy by the brothers 
Grimm, is an historical personage, grand- 
uncle far off of the Esquimaux. These 
Ogres, wandering out of the Altai range, 
went east and west ; they were the proto- 
type of all wild men and savage genii, 
dwelling in caverns and forests, using 
clubs, and snares, and weapons made of 
bone. The Northmen who came from 
the Indian region, called the Ugrian a 

* Chambers's Encyclop. Art. Turanians. 
t Prichard, Nat. His. Man. 
\ lb. p. 184. 



122 BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



Jotun ; his fame extended to the Greek, 
who named him a Titan. 

These branches of the Finn family 
gradually drifted South, and occupied 
some very fair countries. They blended 
in many instances with Aryans, and rose 
to loftier fortunes;* others, surrounded 
for centuries by Indo-European families, 
lost their original characteristics to a large 
degree, and became capable of better 
things. In the days of Tacitus the Finns 
proper were as savage as their cousins, 
the Lapps; but in the course of time the 
Finn has gracefully accepted civilization, 
while many of his near kindred have kept 
out of its way. The " Finn hypothesis " f 
supposes the whole area of Europe to 
have been first covered with Finnic tribes, 
and that these have been superseded by 
Indo-European families. The favorite 
illustration of this theory being a geologi- 
cal one, z>., that the Finns were a primary 
stratum, the Indo-Europeans a secondary 
stratum, but, as often happens, there are 
spots where the primary stratum crops 
through the secondary; a sample of this 
being the Basques of Spain and France. 
Though this theory has been opposed by 
some good authorities^: it is doubtless 
true in the main,§ though probably not 
in its widest sense. 

* See Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies, Vol. 
I. Ch. VII. 

t Originating with Arndt, promulgated by Rask, 
accepted by many savants. 
tBy Latham, notably. 

§ W. H. Dall found among the Orarian (or Fin- 
nic) tribes of Alaska abodes identical with those of 
the " Cave Dwellers " of France, and drawings 
identical with those found in the Ugrian Dordogne 
caves of France. 



THE POLAR RACES. 



123 



We will suppose a large portion of the 
European area to have been occupied by 
Finnic nations. Being thoroughly no- 
madic, they entered upon lands without 
expecting to abide there, and were thus 
easily dispossessed by slight pressure of 
other emigrants : they were also too sav- 
age to have any organized government, 
any leadership, any systematic warfare, 
any good weapons ; such races as the Ger- 
mans and Celts were sure, therefore, to 
overpower them. The Finns are to be 
looked on as the people of a receding iron- 
tier. The Finn had drifted down into 
sunny plains along the Mediterranean 
sea ; the children of Javan and the Phoeni- 
cians stole slowly into his seats, as the tide 
steals up along the shore ; the Finn re- 
treated sullenly northward. His cradle 
had been rocked by sharp winds and 
whitened by snows : retiring northward, 
therefore, he went towards a clime con- 
genial to his habits. While the Finn thus 
departed from the South in the mass, cer- 
tain families remained behind, and be- 
came, long after, witnesses to his first pos- 
session. These tribes of savages found 
their own kindred in Finland, Sweden, 
Norway, Lapland, Obi. They still kept 
drawing back, like a snail into its shell, 
when touched by the fierce and gifted 
Aryans, who continually poured out of 
Asia. 

Barren steppes, plains of everlasting 
snow, long months of darkness, were 
the final inheritance of the Finn. The 
tribe of Magyars, the best developed of 
this race, remained permanently in Hun- 
gary, gave up its nomadic preferences, 
accepted Aryan ideas and civilization, 



124 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



and abiding for these many ages in Cen- 
tral Europe, have proved themselves sus- 
ceptible of the highest culture.* 

The Finn (ever viewing the word in its 
widest sense) left three memorials of his 
abode in happier climes than he now 
possesses. His tumuli, remnants of his 
family — as Basques and Magyars — and 
the flints of the drift. There have been 
astonishing assertions that these last were 
forty thousand years old ; were sufficient 
in themselves to prove the revelation 
given in Genesis a mere fallacy; indicated 
a pre-Adamite race some million gen- 
erations removed out of our knowledge, 
etc. Here is a very great oak grown out 
of a very little acorn ; this wonderful flint 
of the drift is found to be the residuum 
of some Finnic burial ground ; f the lost 
weapon of him who now makes his knife, 
spear-head, and hook out of a fish-bone 
and seeks his living from the Polar sea. 

There has been much talk of stone 
ages, bronze ages, iron ages of the world, 
and philosophers will date a race from its 
tools, and declare categorically that at 
such a period men used one sort of in- 
struments, and at such another period 
some other variety. But can these 
theories be reasonably sustained ? You 
may go to Egypt or Assyria, to the cradle 
lands, and having theorized you may 
then show this succession of " Ages." 
Adam, Cain and Abel probably used 
stone tools ; Jubal got into bronze ; Miz- 
raim had iron instruments, so we see 
by the Pyramid at Jezeeh.J But must 

* Prichard, Nat. Hist, of Man., Vol. I. Book II. 
t Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies, Vol. I. 
% See Piazzi Smyth's Age of Intellectual Man. 



THE POLAR RACES. 



125 



we draw from this, that in Adam's day 
there was a world full of people, using 
stone tools in all lands, and that 30,000 
years before Adam a mongrel race was 
prowling over France, using tools of 
chipped flint ? Why must we do so, when 
we know that when the Elizabethan age 
shed its glory over England, Indians of 
America were using chipped flints ? 
While civilization glories in Bessemer 
steel, Australia has aborigines hacking 
with stone. Iron was holding glorious 
empire when Sandwich Islanders were in 
what some savants would call a pre-Adam- 
ite age; and if revelation had not gone 
to them with Bible-culture the Sandwich 
Islanders would have died in that age, 
while all of us were in the nineteenth cent- 
ury, and their tools and their bones would 
have been left for coming philosophers to 
prove from them additional thousands of 
earth-years. If people had been in Ire- 
land at the time of the building of the 
Great Pyramid in Egypt, probably they 
would have built something permanent, 
showing such tools as Mizraim possessed. 
But Ireland is very much farther from Shi- 
nar than Egypt ; it needed many succes- 
sive "spurts" of immigration to carry 
man so far from the original home, and he 
lost his light, his tools, his genius, on the 
weary way. 

These wanderers in Europe, South Af- 
rica, Eastern Asia had no revelation with 
them in a written word ; they had no 
great teachers of the race in their midst, 
and they went deeper and deeper into 
darkness and degradation with every suc- 
ceeding generation. We need not go out 
of our own decade for an illustration. 



126 BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



Look at New York, at Paris, at London, 
and you see splendor, culture, luxury. 
Look now westward until you see a Dig- 
ger Indian, living on roots, half naked, 
undersized, burrowing in the ground, like 
a mole for shelter. What age of the 
world have we here? Our Celtic ances- 
tors, before Caesar's day, could have stone 
cabins, and could bury their dead in bur- 
rows better than a Digger Indian's house. 
The descendants of these same Celts are 
grand, rich, wise, pious — " I said ye are 
gods, and every one of you children of 
the Most High." 

But look west once more, and you will 
see in our own day children of these 
same Celts, our brethren, who should 
have stood with us, reverted to the estate 
of Diggers, living, eating, burrowing like 
them." The fact is that man's state of 
advancement is not to be measured by 
the "Age" of the world in which he 
lives, but by the ratio of his Revelation. 
Man progresses or deteriorates in pro- 
portion as he loses or increases in his 
Revelation. Compare Abraham 1900 
years B.C. with the Digger Indian of 1870 
A.D. Compare that magnificent heathen, 
Nebuchadnezzar, with the Digger hea- 
then ; both heathen it is true, but the 
Babylonian, so very many years nearer 
the Revelation, so many thousands of 
miles nearer the men who held it, and re- 
ceived its increase ; nearer the simple 
Monotheism of Nimrod's day, nearer the 
glory of Solomon. 

* Such a spectacle of deteriorating humanity 
could have been found during the Civil War no 
farther west than Missouri in the Ozark region. 
Hoc vzdi. 



THE POLAR RACES. 



27 



We seem to have wandered away from 
our Finnic brothers, but in fact we have 
only been pointing out how Lapp, Kori- 
ack, Kamtchatkan, Samoiede presents 
himself as such a miserable specimen of 
our Japhethic race. We have him now 
before us, an ungainly child from the 
Turanian cradle — given to wandering. 
He goes ; the child's song might describe 
him : " One flew east, one flew west, one 
flew into the cuckoo's nest." Dreary 
Kamtchatka receives him ; he strays 
along the Siberian plain, and sets one 
tribe down in Obi, and another in Lap- 
land, and another in Finland. Then some 
of his stragglers have a fancy for going 
south. Hungary gets a portion and 
makes the very best of them ; France has 
a share ; but the Indo-Europeans are 
cuckoos indeed, and the nest is theirs, 
because they drive every one else out of 
it. The Finns retreat northward again, 
and fill up the shores of the great polar 
basin, and take possession of terrible ice- 
bound islands, and at last manage — on 
floating ice, or in frail kayaks — to cross 
Behring's Strait and begin their migra- 
tions along the polar basin, on the Ameri- 
can Continent. Their final arrival in 
Greenland falls within historic times ; * 
they insensibly mingle with their Mon- 
golian kindred along the southern edge of 
their line of abode. It is easier to trace 
the Esquimau from his Asian home, 
than the Polynesian from his. Instances 
of the driving of small boats across Behr- 
ing's Straits are not unknown in our own 
day.f The Esquimau is first cousin of 

* Humboldt's Cosmos. 

f Prichard, Nat. Hist, of Man. ; Bancroft. 



128 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



the Tschuches or Chuckees.* . The latter 
tribe are closely allied to the Kamtchat- 
kans, and thus we trace them all around 
the shores of the North Sea. They are 
probably the world's latest wanderers, 
the last to find their dominion ; and they 
take for themselves those desolate regions 
desired by none beside. 

Physically, the Ichthyophagi are dirty, 
ugly, hardy, long lived, prolific. Men- 
tally, they are slow of comprehension, 
stubborn of opinion, and though they 
have been described f as most evil of dis- 
position, the experience of travellers has 
seemed to show that they are not in tem- 
per worse than other men ; that they are 
frequently loyal, faithful, hospitable, and 
capable of a good degree of cultivation.^: 
Their religious ideas, while fundamentally 
the same as we find among all other races 
of men, yet have their peculiar form, im- 
pressed upon them by the singular life 
and surroundings of the Hyperborean. § 
The very marked slowness and stupidity 
of the Esquimaux, and indeed of his con- 

* Dall's Alaska. 

t M. Charlevoix, Hist, of New France. " lis sont 
feroces, farouches, defiants, inquiets toujours, portes 
a faire du mal aux etrangers." 

| See Dall's Alaska. He denies that they are 
prolific. 

§The recent intercourse of our Presbyterian 
Missionaries, with the Mongolian and Ugrian tribes 
of Alaska, has laid open a wonderful inheritance 
of tradition. Some of these tribes have not only 
tradition of the Noachic Deluge, but also of the 
original Chaos, the first dividing of the waters, and 
the creation of heavenly bodies, plants, animals and 
men in nearly the Mosaic order of succession. 
And these traditions have evidently no touch of 
4< white men's teaching." The grotesque form at- 
tests the originality and antiquity of the myth. 



THE POLAR RACES. 



129 



geners about the polar basin, have 
hindered the framing of their relig- 
ious notions into any fixed system ; 
it has also been peculiarly easy for them 
to forget the sacred traditions of their 
ancestors, for they are exceedingly indo- 
lent, and materialistic. The utter ab- 
sence of any written characters has also 
aided greatly in their mental deteriora- 
tion. When we consider these things, 
we shall marvel, that this race, above all 
races, has afforded the best commentary 
upon the words of Paul. " Because that 
which may be known of God is manifest 
in them ; for God shewed it unto them. 
For the invisible things of God from the 
creation of the world are clearly seen, 
being understood by the things which are 
made, even his eternal power and god- 
head ; so that they are without excuse." 
If it were possible for God to have per- 
ished out of any people's consciousness, 
if the early history of our race could have 
faded out of any minds, we should say 
that these Finnic tribes would be the 
ones to suffer such a loss. When we find 
an idea of God, of human responsibility 
and destiny, and of human history, re- 
tained in these minds, we acknowledge 
the indelible stamp of God. 

The Cosmogony of the Greenlander is 
in the main that of his kindred tribes, 
and of it we will give a brief statement.* 
The first man, Kallak, rose out of the 
earth ; a woman was created from his 
thumb ; from these two sprung the hu- 
man race. The woman brought death 

* Drawn chiefly from Hist, of Greenland, by Rev. 
David Crantz, Moravian Missionary. Also from 
statements of the American Explorer, Dr. Hayes. 
9 



130 BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



by saying, " Let these perish, that the 
coming ones may have room to live." 
Once the world suddenly turned upside 
down, and all the inhabitants were 
drowned, except a few who were trans- 
formed into spirits of fire. One man re- 
mained ; a woman rose out of the ground, 
and they re-peopled the earth. To prove 
the deluge they affirm that on the tops of 
mountains where no men have lived, bones 
of fishes, also shells, are to be found. 

The Hyperborean tribes are exceed- 
ingly superstitious ; they believe in sor- 
cery, and maintain Angekoks, or wizards.* 
They also believe in air and fire and 
water spirits, and in demons, also in 
ghosts. There are among these rude 
races two classes of people, representing 
two diverse lines of thought. The more 
ignorant hold to migrations of the soul 
during sleep, and of the entering of the 
soul of the dead, into living bodies, hu- 
man or animal : this class also hold that 
the abode of spirits is in the centre of the 
earth. The more intelligent believe that 
the soul r while shaped like the body, is 
bright and impalpable ; that the abode of 
the dead is above the sky, and that the 
transit is accomplished with the speed of 
thought. They believe in one mighty, 
good and supreme god Torngarsuk, and 
when missionaries preach to them of the 
Almighty they readily recognize in Him 
that infinite and eternal being whom ig- 
norantly they have worshipped. f Torn- 

* Markedly also Shammans, in Alaska. See 
Sheldon Jackson's Alaska ; and Wright's Among 
the Alaskans. 

t For Alaskan mvths see Among the Alaskans, 
Chap. II. 



THE POLAR RACES, 



garsuk with his co-deity — wife or mother 
— dwells in bright unending summer, 
heat, and sunshine ! Cold, snow, storms 
are unknown in that divine home ; limpid 
streams run with music tones ; there is no 
night there ; food is plenty ; leisure and 
feasting are perpetual. But these blest 
abodes are reserved only for the good and 
industrious. Torngarsuk, from his lofty 
hill, views all the sons of men, and keeps 
in his mind the account of all their deeds. 
The soul leaves the body, and begins a 
dangerous five-days' pilgrimage toward 
the isle of light. Torngarsuk's all-seeing 
eye rests on the pilgrim spirit ; he reviews 
in his unforgetting soul the history of 
the life that has ended. The disembodied 
spirit arrives at the shore of a mighty sea. 
If he has been evil no kayak waits him, 
no hand is held to him from that hill of 
glory ; cold and night wrap him ; demons 
seize him. The forlorn future of that 
soul is veiled in storms forever. But per- 
chance the spirit has a happier destiny. 
Torngarsuk beholds his faithful servant — 
the slayer of bears and seals, the skilled 
fisher, the maker of garments, the mother 
of children. The approving deity sends 
a kayak to that shore ; the glad soul en- 
ters, and is carried to a warm snowless 
Island. This isle rises in three terraces, 
and is crowned by the glowing pavilion 
of Torngarsuk. The three terraces suit 
three degrees of goodness in the soul : 
good, better, best, near, nearer, nearest to 
Torngarsuk. The edge of the island is 
circled with beautiful blazing fires for 
cooking : over each fire hangs a pot full of 
flesh. Around these pots sit the good, 
enjoying an uninterrupted eating, where- 



I 3 2 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



of no end is known ! The second terrace 
has better fires, bigger pots, daintier 
food ; the third is still an improvement 
after the same kind ! Some of the more 
thoughtful savages deny so material a fu- 
ture, but have nothing to offer instead. 
They all decide for immortality, two 
states after death, and that the soul's fu- 
ture state is absolutely fixed by the deeds 
of this life. Torngarsuk's female deity 
acts the part of evil spirit. As to the end 
of the world, they vaguely hold that 
sometime the world will be " washed 
clean," broken into fragments ; and that 
a new world will be made of the pieces, a 
world pure, warm, full of food and sun- 
light. 

Finally, we may advert to what the 
good missionary, Crantz, tells us, of the 
reasoning of two heathen Esquimaux of 
more than average intelligence, concern- 
ing the being and power of God : 

" Men have understanding different from brutes : 
brutes are subject to men, and fear them ; men are 
subject to no one but fear lives in their souls. 
What do they fear? Surely men must fear 
some mighty, unseen, overruling Spirit. Oh then 
they desire to know him, and placate him." 

Again : 

" A boat does not grow of itself ; man must 
make it ; but man cannot make a bird. Man is 
more wonderful than all other things ; who made 
him? Man comes from his parents, they from 
theirs; but whence came the first pair? If they 
grew from the earth, why do they come thence no 
longer ? Who made the sun, moon and stars ? 
Not man ; they are out of his reach. There must 
then be some One whom nobody made, and who 
made all things. He must be wise and very strong 
to make so much : very good to fit things to their 



THE POLAR RACES. 



133 



uses as he has. Who has heard or seen Him ? 
No one ; yet there may somewhere be those who 
have both seen and heard him." 

Truly in such secret communings of the 
heathen heart, the voice of the Invisible 
God is heard. 

The Esquimaux is the only race com- 
mon to both the Eastern and the West- 
ern Continent. Some ethnologists have 
held him for a pure Mongol.* The best 
authorities, however, consider him not 
Mongol, but cousin to the Mongol. The 
Finnic tribes, the Mongolians, the Malays 
and Turks have the same original descent ; 
they are divisions doubtless of the family 
of Magog, but divisions which branched 
off from the main line in pre-historic 
times, and have for thousands of years 
been increasing their physical and philo- 
logical divergencies. 

Greenland, the last outpost of the Fin- 
nic tribes, was reached from Europe by 
the Norwegians, who took Faroe and 
Iceland in the way, and reached Green- 
land about 982. While the Norwegians 
were in possessions, the Esquimaux ar- 
rived for the first time in Greenland in 
the fourteenth century. They were the 
advance-guard of the Finnic host, and 
appeared on the west shore, having for 
many centuries been slowly toiling from 
the steppes of Asia. Here on this cold 
coast the eastern and western streams of 
migration met. 

* Latham. 



t 



CHAPTER X. 

MONGOLS AND MALAYS. 

" There to wander far away 
On from island unto island, at the gateways of the 
day. 

Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and 
happy skies, 

Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, 

knots of Paradise. 
Summer isles of Eden, lying in dark purple spheres 

of sea." 

As the plain of Iran was the geographi- 
cal centre of a large family of nations, 
the Altai Mountains were the headquar- 
ters of another great and diversified race. 
These have been so differently classified 
by various ethnologists, accordingly as 
they drew their data from philology, 
physical conformation, or geographical 
position, and the subdivisions of tribes 
have become so minute, that only an 
ethnologist would be interested in follow- 
ing them.* Omitting small classes, and 
ignoring — as becomes so brief a work — 
disputed points, we find included under 
the term Mongolidae an immense number 

* Among earliest ethnologists color and skull-for- 
mation afforded the chief data for dividing the hu- 
man race into families, and assigning each tribe its 
place. Later philology claimed to furnish the only 
proper ground for settling descent and affinities. 
At present the most able ethnologists admit more 
largely into their considerations questions of habits, 
tastes, traditions, peculiar customs, and general 
likeness. 



MONGOLS AND MALA VS. 



135 



of Asiatic, Polynesian and American fami- 
lies.* Of these, Mongol is the elder 
brother, and family head. Turan, the 
grandfather of the Turks, was another 
brother; in our last chapter we pursued 
some of the devious ways of Ogre, still 
another of this family. Malay was by no 
means an insignificant scion of the stock. 

Mongol, from his high throne in Cen- 
tral Asia, sent forth a number of his sons 
to establish themselves in such parts of 
the earth as would suit them for king- 
doms. These sons settled themselves in 
China, Siam, Thibet, Anam, Burmah, 
Cambodia, Japan, and other Asian terri- 
tories. Their chief characteristic was 
their monosyllabic language. Their 
words were almost entirely of single syl- 
lables, and they rejected inflection. One 
of these sons exceeded all his brethren in 
pride, ingenuity, and the amount of terri- 
tory which he acquired. We should not 
have known his name, had not his distant 
cousin in India retained it for us ; it was 
Chin. 

We shall take Chin, therefore, as the 
exponent of all those children of Mongol 
who were established between their 
uncles, Ogre on the north, Turk on the 
west, Malay on a long crooked peninsula 
on the south, and their elegant cousin 
Hindu on the southwest. Chin called 
himself the middle kingdom, affirming 
that he was the centre of the world, and 
considering himself most of its circumfer- 
ence : Turk called him Cathay, and de- 
tailed marvellous romances about him : 
Hindu always called him Chin, we fear 
in contempt of his monosyllabic tongue, 

* Latham, Varieties of Man, Sect. Mongolidcs. 



136 BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



and it was as late as the seventeenth cent- 
ury of our era before the world found 
out that Chin and Cathay were one and 
the same.* 

Chin himself is not fond of sea voyages, 
and has only pre-empted one island, Hai- 
nan ; his younger brother went into Japan 
and Chin patronized him, and bestowed 
much civilization upon him. The preco- 
cious wisdom of Chin exhibits itself in the 
land in which he set up his kingdom ; it 
possesses almost every variety of soil, 
climate and vegetable production , it has 
two grand mountain chains, a magnificent 
river system, and five great lakes : its har- 
bors are excellent and numerous, and its 
minerals rich and varied. The flora and 
ornithology of China are marvellous in 
beauty and variety. Surrounded thus with 
beauty, one would expect Chin to be him- 
self beautiful in mind and person ; on the 
contrary Chin physically is a mild and 
amusing caricature of the Aryan, and 
Chin mentally is given to the grotesque. 
Hyperbole is largely developed in Chin's 
soul. Imitation is his eminent charac- 
teristic. As case-inflection is a mystery 
to which he can never attain, so the laws 
of perspective are entirely beyond the cir- 
cle of his ideas. Chin, a tawny, black-eyed, 
unmuscular, straight-haired, high-cheeked 
Mongolian is a bundle of genius, fortitude, 
periphrases, deceit, industry, materialism, 
literature, and acquisitiveness ; he pre- 
sents the greatest instance of a self-con- 
tained civilization, national homogeneous- 
ness, and longevity, in an extensive area, 
that the world has, or can, ever behold. 
China proudly disputes with India the 

* Chambers s Encyclopedia, Art. Chinese Empire, 



MONGOLS AND MALA YS. 



l 37 



claim of the highest antiquity ; the fabu- 
lous chronology of the empire is carried 
back for thousands of ages or cycles, and 
enters into the history and reign of gods. 
Though China was a great empire at the 
time of the Greek Republics, and the 
conquests of Alexander, it was quite un- 
known to the Ionian savants, and the 
conquering pupil of Aristotle believed 
that India was the eastern limit of the 
earth.* 

Augustus seems not to have heard of 
China, and it was so late as 140 years 
after Christ before Chinese productions 
found their way to Rome. Therefore we 
have no contemporary testimony concern- 
ing the ancient history of this marvellous 
land. Many historians have hastily ad- 
mitted the establishment of the Chinese 
Empire at three hundred years after the 
Deluge. Others assert that its first em- 
perors were reigning during the days of 
Abraham, and that Chinese antiquity 
and civilization were parallel with that of 
Egypt. When we consider the immense 
distance of China from that Aryan plain 
which was undoubtedly the cradle of the 
race, the difficult country that lay between 
the ruggedness of surface and variety of 
climate in China, we shall see that it is 
the height of absurdity to make the Em- 
pire contemporaneous with that of the 
Pharaohs. 

The great light of China rose in Confu- 
cius : while Solon was giving laws to 
Athens ; Confucius was teaching the Chi- 
nese morals, philosophy, astronomy, and 
civil law. While Herodotus was writing 

* China, in Bohn's Illustrated Library, Vol. XV., 
Introduction. 



138 BRICKS FROM BABEL, 



history, Confucius was making history. 
Some two hundred years before Christ a 
colony of Jews arrived in China, descend- 
ants of whom yet remain in the empire.* 
In A.D. 94, an envoy was sent from the 
Chinese court to seek intercourse with 
Arabia ; in A.D. 61 Antoninus sent a 
fruitless embassy to China; in 635 the 
Nestorians sent missionaries thither ; and 
in the thirteenth century missionaries 
went to China from Rome.f We must 
take these glimpses of contact with the 
outer world into account, when we con- 
sider the progress of the Chinese in arts 
and sciences, and their wonderful inven- 
tions. The Chinese invented for them- 
selves coined money. Their earliest hier- 
oglyphical writing bears some resem- 
blance to the earliest Egyptian, and was 
doubtless derived in pre-historic times 
from the same source.^ The Chinese are 
ignorant of physical sciences, but early 
pursued medicine and arithmetic, and 
.have for themselves worked out such in- 
ventions as printing, gunpowder, the 
mariner's compass, and silk manufacture. 
Chin was surely the most marvellous 
child of Mongol. 

The first and greatest enemy of Chin, 
was Hun, one of the grandsons of Turk. 
Hun, a very violent and greedy character, 
black in hue, and evil in disposition, grew 
up in Turkestan, loving nothing but war- 
fare. The Huns having expanded to a 
great tribe, in the second century before 

* History of the Chinese Empire, by Sir J. F. 
Davis, 
t Ibid. 

\ See Chambers's Encyclopedia, Art. on Chinese 
Language a?id Writing. 



MONGOLS AND MALA YS. 139 



our era attacked China, and gained many 
victories over the peaceable and toiling 
sons of Chin. The great wall of China is 
a relic of the days when the cousins Hun 
and Chin were ' fighting for the crown.' 
The Huns subsequently overran Europe ; 
and for a time the empires of the East 
and West seemed to lie at their mercy. 
Their power attained its maximum in At- 
tila, and thenceforward swiftly decayed. 

Set on the remotest eastern limit of the 
earth, shut off for centuries from his com- 
peers, Chin yet retained the early tradi- 
tions of the Noachic family. Eden he 
remembers thus : In the first heaven all 
creation enjoyed unbounded happiness 
and beauty ; all beings were perfect in 
their kind ; and pain, labor, death, want, 
vice, were unknown.* Into this blissful 
period evil came in the spontaneous de- 
velopment of a covetous temper. From 
this seed of covetousness grew a mighty 
tree of wrongs and disasters, which has 
overshadowed the whole earth. Early 
men were of astonishingly long life, and 
taller than pagodas. Over this polluted 
earth rose the waters of a deluge.f Fo- 
Hi alone was worthy to be saved, and 
with him were preserved his wife, three 
sons, and three daughters-in-law.;): The 
number three in the first family of the 
human race, is very curiously maintained 
in almost all mythologies : it is the remi- 
niscence of the three sons of Adam, and 
the ; three sons of Noah. The Chinese 
recall these three sons, in their eight pri- 

* Faber, Horcs Mosaicce. 
f Hardwick, Christ and other Masters. 
i See Address of Sir Win. Jones to Asiatic So- 
ciety. 



140 BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



mary Konas, each of which is made up of 
three. In common with most heathen, 
the Chinese believe in one original, pervad- 
ing, universal God, greater than, and an- 
terior to, the gods of their pantheon. 
" He whom the spirit perceiveth, and the 
eye cannot see, is called K" * This Fis 
the hieroglyphic for three in one ; but here 
we are not to find the trace of God's Trin- 
ity and Unity, but of the three branches 
of the race which God created. 

The Chinese are materialistic in their 
belief and exceedingly indifferent in mat- 
ters of religion. Three chief forms of 
idolatry flourish among them. They 
were long ago filled with the theories and 
superstitions of India. They have an 
extreme horror of death, and avoid speak- 
ing of it directly. They believe in the 
immortality of the soul, and adore the 
manes of their ancestors. With the ex- 
ception of the one or two ancient opinions 
and traditions mentioned above, it is dif- 
ficult to determine what parts of their 
doctrine were originally held by them, 
and what they have received from Hindu 
Jewish, Moravian, and Romish teachers 
in very early times. 

We have said that Chin, son of Mongol, 
had an especial fear of trusting himself to 
the treacherous surface of the deep ; he 
clung to the inland, and isles tempted 
him in vain. But in the days of the Dis- 
persion God planted in the souls of vari- 
ous families secret longings and inclinings, 
suited to the varied surface of the earth 
which they were to populate. He put 
their souls en rapport with those lands 
which he had decreed for their inherit- 

* See Faber, Origin of Heathen Idolatry, Vol. I, 



MONGOLS AND MALAYS. 141 



ance. Malay, the uncle of Chin, betook 
himself to a long, narrow peninsula east 
of India. His was a swarming family for 
so small a space, but that mattered little, 
for it was written in the destinies of Ma- 
lay that he should put to sea. One of 
the greatest problems of the world is 
wrapped up in those pre-historic wander- 
ings of Malay ; a problem which shall 
probably never be fully solved. Did Ma- 
lay build an innumerable fleet and go 
en masse to populate Polynesia ? Did he 
get his fleet ready, he knew not why, and 
then did the winds blow him to those 
multitudinous isles of the Western and 
Southern Oceans — isles of which he had 
never dreamed ? Or, was his early fam- 
ily small and weak ; and did they through 
a long lapse of years drop from Asia to 
some near island, and from thence go, 
family by family — sent by war, pestilence, 
superstition — to islands more and more 
remote, until in the slow lapse of years 
all those beautiful archipelagos swarmed 
with human life ? And whence came that 
migration which kept even step with Ma- 
lay, making the two types of mankind in 
Polynesia ? " If we could solve these 
problems, all others would be easy." * 

We have now under consideration that 
immense territory variously named by 
different geographers, comprising Malay- 
asia, Polynesia, and Australasia, and 
stretching from Madagascar to islands 
that lie not many days' journey from the 
Western American coast ; from the glow- 
ing shores of India to chill isles washed 
by the Antarctic Ocean — a mighty arma- 

* See Appendix IV. 



142 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



da of islands moored on the Indian and 
Pacific seas. 

We begin with two remarks concerning 
the people of these islands. First, we 
find among them — as we find in India — 
two distinct races,* a lighter and a 
darker ; and as upon the continent, we 
may consider these the descendants of a 
primeval and subjugated Cushite stock, 
and of a more powerful Japhethic line, 
which in pre-historic times came among 
them. These two races have passed into 
the different islands as fugitives and pur- 
suers, as masters and servants, as con- 
querors and allies ; and while the types of 
each race retain their distinctive charac- 
teristics, we find them insensibly passing 
into each other, and also in their inter- 
marrying, producing a family of mixed 
blood, sharing the peculiarities of each.f 
Second, while classing these islanders un- 
der the general term of Malays, we regard 
Malay, not as the parent, but as the elder 
brother of the island tribes. Physiology 
and philology point to a fraternal, rather 
than a filial, relation between these races. 
Malay, the old parent, sent off many 
branches, and it is quite impossible to 
determine if the original race exists any- 
where in its entirety. We have now 
Malay, the elder born and heir, and his 
scattered brothers. 

The Malays or Polynesians represent a 
people originally of low intellect, and of 
barbarous manners. Doubtless Malay 
branched off from the Altaic Family after 
Babel had for many centuries been left 
behind ; when much of the original light 

*See Latham, Varieties of Man. 
tRussel, Poly?iesia, Ch. I. 



MONGOLS AND MALA YS. 



143 



had been lost,* and when long wandering 
and severe combats with beasts and man 
had degraded the humanity which had 
shown out so nobly in Noah and his 
sons. 

The first migration from the Asian 
Continent, probably rested, in very an- 
cient times, upon the great Islands of 
Java, Sumatra and Borneo. There is 
every reason to suppose that this migra- 
tion was of very rude people, and of the 
two races indicated above, the Cushite, 
and the Malayan. The widening wave 
of this migration swept southward league 
after league, broadening east and west, 
and rolling over isle after isle, leaving 
what had but now been primitive soli- 
tude, full of human life. 

While men thus flowed southward, a 
new migration entered the large islands 
nearest the continent. The Hindus 
bestowed their culture, arts, and religion 
on the islanders, and the islanders be- 
coming enterprising, commercial, and ac- 
quisitive, poured back on the peninsula 
of Malacca, which was yet inhabited by 
their half savage brothers or progenitors.f 
In our era, Islamism overrunning Malacca, 
and the great Islands of the Indian Archi- 
pelago, completed what Brahmanism and 
Buddhism had begun, making of these 
tribes what we find them in the present 
day, before Christianity enlightens their 
soul — people of some refinement, art, lit- 
erature, civilization ; but cruel, treacher- 
ous, superstitious and intolerant.^ Mean- 
while, on the remoter wanderers, no light 

* Prichard, Physical History of Mankind. 
Mbid. 

X Sir S. Raffles, History of Java. 



144 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



had risen : the little candle of their origi- 
nal light flickered feebly, and almost 
died away: their superstitions became 
more gross, their creed more bloody, 
their manners more brutal. 

Among even the most debased and dis- 
tant of these wanderers, we get traces of 
their Asiatic origin, and of the traditions, 
which they brought from the mainland. 
They have caste, taboo, and circumcision 
— all of which are Asian. A general tra- 
dition refers their ancestors, their gods, 
and their Paradise to the northwest ; and 
amid all its diversities we can trace 
a general resemblance in their language. 
The most distant islands will have a 
speech very different from that of the 
mainland, yet much like the nearest 
island, and that much like its nearest 
neighbor, the dye of Malayan running 
through them all.* 

The Japanese islands are peopled by 
younger brothers of the Chinese ; Ceylon 
by Hindus. All other islands in the 
Indian and Pacific Oceans, except Bour- 
bon, Mauritius, and the little Maldives, 
Laccadives, and Seychelles, are peopled 
by this race — the Malayo-Polynesian. 
Even distant Madagascar and Formosa, 
close to China, are inhabited by this 
family. f And this race being everywhere 
on the ocean, is found nowhere on the 
continents, its closest kin being the Ma- 
layans of the Peninsula. Everywhere 
when we find the two families of islanders 
together, we shall find the darker element 
subordinated to the fairer, and they bear 
the traces of a receding or fleeing popula- 

*See Polynesia, by Rev. M. Russell, 
f Latham, Varieties of Man. 



MONGOLS AND MALA VS. 



US 



tion ; for they seem to be the first inhabit- 
ants of the islands successively, and their 
" continuous area " is farthest south.* 

It is interesting to consider the prob- 
able course of this migration among the 
islands. Latham, on philological grounds, 
supposes the least easy course, i.e., that 
Micronesia, including the Caroline and 
Marianne Isles, was first reached from 
the Indo-Chinese coast. Thence popula- 
tion drifted east, south, west, and north- 
east.f His theory seems to us less ably 
reasoned than is common with him. 

To apprehend the facility of passing 
through the various groups of islands in 
Polynesia, let us trace the course of prob- 
able migration, from Sumatra ; this island 
having been peopled from Malacca. Bor- 
neo lies 300 miles distant, but this 300 
miles is sown with islands, Banca, and 
one or two others, being of considerable 
size. From the north of Borneo the 
Philippines are to be reached through a 
constant succession of islands. Going 
east from Borneo, the Straits of Macas- 
sar, 200 miles wide, and not destitute of 
islands, open a way to Celebes, which 
could be as readily reached by going 
from Sumatra into Java, through the close- 
lying chain of islands extending eastward, 
and so striking north to Celebes. There 
are four hundred miles between Celebes 
and New Guinea, but Buro, Ceram and 
a multitude of smaller islands, offer rest- 
ing places. New Guinea is a favorable 
point of departure for the New Hebrides, 
Fiji, Friendly, Navigators, and Society 

* Latham, Varieties of Man. 
t Latham's notes on Prichard's Eastern Origin 
of the Celtic Races. 
10 



146 BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



Islands. Australia lies, at Cape York, 
close upon New Guinea ; New Zealand is 
1 200 miles from Fiji, and nearly as far 
from Tasmania, but several islands break 
the distance from Fiji, and we have in- 
stances of boats being driven quite as far 
in these seas.* A missionary's boat was 
driven from Tahiti to Atiu, and from 
Rarotonga to Tongataboo, making 1500 
miles. We are told that some natives of 
Aitutaki, were drifted in a canoe to 
Proby's Island, a distance of 1000 miles. 
Between the Ladrone and the Sandwich 
Islands, and the latter and Fiji, the sea is 
dotted with islands. These islanders, or 
Polynesians, have always been daring 
and expert in navigation. Long before 
Europeans came among them, there were 
powerful maritime states in the Indian 
Archipelago, and now as many as 200 
proas will leave Macassar for fisheries at 
New Holland, sailing in January with the 
westerly monsoon. f 

The Polynesians have the usual vague 
idea of one great creative god, pervading 
all things ; they have also an infinite 
number of lesser deities, and of deified 
ancestors. Their religion is shockingly 
gross and superstitious, — including can- 
nibalism, infanticide, and human sacrifice. 
We have noticed some of their Asian 
peculiarities; of these they carry the idea 
of caste so far, that it regulates the future 
state of the soul. Their Paradise is a 
glorious island, where live the gods, 
heroes, and chiefs. High-caste people 
are immortal and live, after death, with 
the gods ; but low-caste people perish 

* M. Russell, in Polynesia. 

t King's Narrative of a Survey, etc., Vol. I. 



MONGOLS AND MALA VS. 



147 



like brutes. Prayer and sacrifice are need- 
ful to avert wrath, and to secure favor 
from the gods. Many traditions of the 
Deluge exist. Long ago, men being dis- 
obedient to the gods, Taarsa, the high 
god, undertook to drown the world. One 
man in a canoe was spared, and landing on 
a mountain built an altar to his god.* 
Another tradition declares that one good 
man was warned to enter a boat with his 
family and domestic animals. The Fiji's 
have a very clear tradition, declaring the 
saved to have been eight, four men and 
their wives. f With this memory of the 
deluge they seem also to confound the 
tradition of creation, saying that the first 
man and woman were created from a 
floating bamboo. The gods created the 
world, when at first there was nothing 
but water rolling under a dark sky. 
Here again a memory of the deluge comes 
in with the tale of a weary glede flying 
between sea and sky, with no rest for her 
foot. The gods long ago mingled with 
men ; and some families thus have a 
divine origin. The first sin was quarrel- 
ling between the original man and woman. 

Among all these islanders there is a 
similarity of language,' of habits of life, 
and of religious ideas. They are all partly 
agricultural, ready at many curious arts 
and manufactures, and adepts in fishing 
and boating. Their weapons, manners, 
social laws, and life have also a strong 
resemblance between tribe and tribe ; 
differences beginning and passing on by 
such insensible degrees, that though the 
variety in extremes may be great, one 

* Ellis, Polynesian Researches, Vol. II. 
t Hardwick, Part III. 



148 BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



cannot readily tell where it began. All 
have been apt pupils in religion and 
Christianity. Though something has been 
learned about these Polynesians there 
are yet many dark and vexed questions 
about their descent, relationship, early 
wanderings and original belief. No other 
family of the earth has been so widely 
scattered, none other has lost so much of 
the original light and been so late to re- 
gain the revelation.* 

* See Latham's Varieties of Man ; Prichard's 
Natural History of Man.; and Sir S. Raffles's 
Java. 



CHAPTER XI. 



THE CHILDREN OF THE NEW WORLD. 

" Or over hills with peaky tops engrailed, 
And many a tract of palm and rice, 
The throne of Indian Cama slowly sailed, 
A summer fanned with spice." 

We have seen the Ugrians wandering 
slowly out of Asia, by way of the Tschu- 
sches Peninsula, and making their pil- 
grimage along the snowy polar shore, 
until in Greenland they met a counter 
migration from the East, and on that 
dreary coast the Norwegians and the 
Esquimaux — those long parted brothers, 
Gomer and Magog — met. From Asia to 
Alaska, the Aleutian Islands lie like a 
bridge, fashioned by God for the transit 
of the earth's fugitives. The form of this 
island chain cannot fail to remind one of 
those rope-bridges, which the Mexicans 
hang across their rivers. 

The movements of the Ugrians in the 
New World, have been the latest of mi- 
grations ; while the migrations of the 
Mongols in America must date back to 
the earliest ages after the Babylonian 
dispersion.* When first the family of 
Mongol divided, a stream of colonists 
pressed in haste north and east of the 
Altai range, and entered the lands of the 
sunset by the gate of the morning. They 

* See Humboldt's Researches in Central Amer- 
ica, Vol. I. 



150 BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



made their way by Behring Straits and 
the Aleutian Islands, and on reaching 
North America, turned abruptly south ; 
there was no affinity between them and 
the destined dominions of their Ugri- 
an cousin ; no lingering in his future 
home : the course of the Mongols was 
south ; they obeyed their destiny. 

Certain propositions have been ad- 
vanced and maintained concerning the 
American tribes : these we enumerate : 

i. They are of Mongolian origin.* 2. 
They are all of one stock.! 3. Their dif- 
ferences of speech, manner and physique, 
are the differences common in a single 
family, and fixed by the immense number 
of generations during which this race has 
been scattered in two continents. % 4. 
The era of their separate and insulated ex- 
istence must date back nearly to the first 
age of dispersion. § 5. They are the sons 
of a deteriorating civilization ; children of 
a long decline, people of a perishing 
light. 1 6. The line of migration has lain 
from north to south, as directly as possi- 
ble between Alaska and Patagonia, and 
from this main line the tribes of all the 
remainder of the territory have branched 
off. This is the converse of what has 

* Latham, American Mongolidce in Varieties 
of Man ; Prichard's Nat. Hist, of Man., and 
Phys. Hist, of Man. 

t Prichard, Physical Hist, of Man., Vol. II. ; 
Schoolcraft, Iroquois, Ch. II. ; Schoolcraft, Ar- 
chives, Vol. IV. 

% Prichard, Nat. Hist, of Man., Ch. XXII.; Her- 
ras ; M. de Humboldt ; Pickering ; Gallatin ; 
Archczologia Americana. 

§ Schoolcraft, Historical, etc., Information. 
Part I. Ch. I. Indian Bureau Papers. 

|| Martius, iiber die Verga7igenheit, etc.; School- 
craft, Archives, Vol. VI. 



THE CHILDREN OF THE NE W WORLD. 151 



been seen in the Old World, where migra- 
tion was in broad belts from east to west.* 
The earliest and advancing tribe were 
mound-builders of much energy, and their 
monuments have a close affinity to those 
of their 'Japhetic brethren in the old 
world. f 

The various nations of the New World 
have comparatively few monuments ; they 
have no ancient records, but few and mea- 
gre traditions, and no contemporary testi- 
mony to their history. Therefore while 
diligent research and comparison have 
obtained for our information the above 
propositions, we can yet say heartily, with 
the address to the French Academy, 
" The Indian is an enigma, and the more 
you study him, the greater the enigma 
becomes.''^ 

The mystery in which the Indian past is 
shrouded has given rise to a multitude of 
conjectures, some of them of the wildest 
character. There have even been those 
who have held that the American Indian 
is the oldest type of humanity, and that 
the Old World was peopled from the New ! 
Others have ardently maintained that the 
Indians were the progenitors of all the 
Polynesian tribes, whom in our last chap- 
ter we briefly considered. Schoolcraft — 
certainly no mean authority — believes the 
Indians to be Shemitic rather than Ja- 
phetic, and desires to derive them from 
Almodad, the son of Joktan. Neverthe- 
less the weight of testimony points to 

* Cosmos ; Humboldt's Mexico; Pratt, SS. and 
Science. 

t See Schoolcraft's Archives, Art. on Mounds ; 
also Part I. 

% Charlevoix, Voyage to America, etc., Vol. I. 



52 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



Mongol as the ancestor of our Indians, 
and the great Altai range as their point 
of departure for the Western Continent. 
But when we grant this departure at some 
very remote date, by way of the Aleutian 
Islands, the time, method, number and 
all else that belongs to that migration, is 
left in utter darkness. We accept these 
Indians then, after their migration, and 
we find them to be of one stock — a stock 
divided in pre-historic times. There are 
evidences which connect the Northern 
Indians with Mexico, and Mexico with 
Peru ; as, for instance, similar modes of 
expression in pictographs ; similarity of 
ideas ; worship of the sun ; general agree- 
ment in arts and in physical types ;* gen- 
eral unity in manners and customs. All 
these speak a common origin, and a com- 
mon home in the childhood of the race. 

There are also four fundamental relig- 
ious ideas common to the tribes, and na- 
tions, from Alaska to Patagonia: I. The 
Creation of the world from Chaos. — 2. 
The general Deluge. — 3. A Good Mind 
and an Evil Mind, ruling over the uni- 
verse. — 4. Adoration of the heavenly 
bodies as types of the Creator, f The In- 
dians have but few traditions of any an- 
tiquity. Their unlettered nomad life has 
prevented their cherishing any history, 
and it is now difficult to gather from 
them articles of their original belief, un- 
mixed with what has been heard from 
white men during two or three genera- 
tions past. 

The substance of pure tradition care- 

* Schoolcraft's Indian Archives ; papers from 
The India?i Bureau, etc., Vol. IV. 
t Schoolcraft, Archives, Vol. V, 



THE CHILDREN OF THE NE W WORLD. 1 53 



fully collected by various scholars is this : 
The Indians hold America to be a great 
Island, the special care of the Good Spirit, 
and the only land in existence. They 
declare themselves to be indigenous, be- 
lieving, in each great tribe, that they 
came out of a cave after a general deluge 
and confusion. But while asserting this, 
they equally hold a directly contrary tra- 
dition, stating that long ago their ances- 
tors came from an evil and distant land, 
over a water full of islands, in a region of 
ice, cold, and snow, where they endured 
great hardships, until they had come by 
long travel into a better climate.* They 
unite in placing the land whence they 
came to the Northwest, beyond Behrings 
Straits. A general tradition also points 
to an extinct tribe — Leni-Lenape — as the 
Original People, or Universal Grand- 
fathers. There are further traces of ex- 
tinct tribes, out of which other tribes 
have sprung ; thus we have vestiges of 
the Lanapees, the Eries, and the Alle- 
ghans — the old mound builders. f 

We obtain a curious proof of the very 
early period when the American Indian 
must have branched from the Old World 
stock, by comparing his points of resem- 
blance with Old World races ; and as we 
find him having many things in common 
with widely separated nations, we infer 
that these ideas and practices were gath- 
ered in a time when these nations were 
dwelling together, and had not each set 
up its own kingdom. The American race, 

* Sir A. McKenzie's Voyages among Arctic 
Tribes ; Introd. 

tSee Schoolcraft's Archives; also his Notes on 
the Iroquois. 



154 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



as a whole, does not hold these resem- 
blances, but they are divided in some of 
its parts : thus, we find the first in Mexico 
and Peru ; i.e., a resemblance to the early 
Egyptians in making the lintel of a door- 
way narrower than its threshold ; and in 
carefully embalming or preserving as 
mummies the bodies of the dead. In 
this embalming the method is not the 
same, owing to difference in climate and 
material obtainable, but the result and 
object are the same. We find a likeness 
to the Babylonians in worship of the 
heavenly bodies and an idea of a future 
state ; * a wonderful similarity to the Per- 
sian idea, in their history of the good and 
the bad mind, striving in the Universe. 
The Mexicans and Peruvians were like 
the Hindus in caste, in manner of wor- 
ship of the planets ; like the Chinese in 
implicit obedience to a despotic govern- 
ment, skill in imitation, and deep rever- 
ence for ancient custom. The Northern 
tribes had many of the Arab and Ugrian 
habits and instincts. 

Considering the American tribes col- 
lectively, we perceive that where they 
have any architectural remains, they are 
those of an early and undeveloped age. 
Through the length of the two continents 
of the New World we can trace that sin- 
gular chain of mound-buildings and tu- 
muli, which marks the Japhetic migra- 
tions over Europe and Asia. The Ameri- 
can idea of the pyramid was inchoate, 
feeble and confused. They preferred a 
circular pyramid, their cones are trun- 
cated ; the orientation is nearly or quite 



* Prescott's Peru, Vol. I. 



THE CHILDREN OF THE NE W WORLD. 1 55 



disregarded, and the materials are poor 
and especially liable to change of shape. 

That the American tribes are a people 
of a deteriorating civilization is readily 
shown. The art of pottery-making was 
universally possessed from Alaska to 
Patagonia ; * but the art did not improve 
among them, and the earliest found speci- 
mens are the best. So also the earliest 
architecture presents the most numerous 
geometric forms. Specimens of carving 
in shells and hard stone have been found 
belonging to an age previous to the dis- 
covery of the country by Columbus, and 
superior to any products of Indian skill 
since that period.f The Indian has also 
always had domesticated animals, and 
certain cultivated plants — notably maize, 
quinoa, mandioca, beans, melons, and 
pumpkins. As in the Old World, cultivat- 
ed nations referred such blessings as the 
olive, wheat, vine, and the horse, to celes- 
tial benefactors, and told their gracious 
tales of Ceres, Bacchus, Pallas, and Posei- 
don, so their brother in the far West, has 
his legend of Hiawatha, of Manco-Capac, 
of Xolotl, of Quetzalcoatl. But while it 
may be held that the American tribes 
have fallen from a higher state of culture, 
there is no proof that that state was ever 
very high, nor approaching to civilization, 
especially in the North. 

In all America there is a perfect blank 
between the deluge and our own era ; a 
blank which offers no shadow of support 
to any speculations concerning what races 
have lived and died, what discoveries 
were made and lost, what beasts and 

* Schoolcraft's Notes on the Iroquois. 
t Ibid., Chap, on Antiquities. 



1 56 BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



jungles were subdued, what wars were 
waged, what forms of government rose 
and perished. Where was this race when 
Moses led the Exodus? The past laughs 
at our query. Where was this race when 
Alexander conquered, and died ? No echo 
of reply. Where, when Christ walked in 
Galilee? Solemn silence still. Where 
when Rome triumphed in Caesar, and 
trembled before the Goth ? Still the Past 
is mute. We pass the crowning of Char- 
lemagne, we see the European kingdoms 
standing grandly in historic light, and 
now the Mexican picture-writings throw 
a faint illumination along the years be- 
tween A.D. iooo, and A.D. 1500. 

Let us turn then to Mexico, as the ex- 
ponent of the most ancient history, and 
the highest cultivation obtained among 
the native races of America. There is a 
wide territory between Mexico and that 
other wonder-kingdom, Peru, and out of 
the southern jungles, in the dim distance 
of the years, we catch glimpses of hag- 
gard Toltecs, of a race that achieved 
something — and died. There can be no 
doubt that in the forefront of the Mon- 
golian migration to America was a slowly 
moving family, of higher culture than the 
rest, which, delaying for long periods, 
losing many of its branches, sending its 
avant couriers forth and losing them, 
came at last into the fairest portions of 
South and of Central America, to set up 
those empires which perished before the 
Spaniard. What vision lured the Aztec 
in his southern march ? What dream 
encouraged him ? We wonder if some 
star of empire went before him in the 
tropic skies, or if he saw the golden 



THE CHILDREN OE THE NE W WORLD. 1 57 



throne of Cama, floating low along his 
horizon, a promise of a bright abode, and 
undisputed seats. 

There is a noticeable refinement and 
philosophy of language among nearly all 
the American tribes ; this was prominent 
among the Aztecs. They were also dil- 
ligent cultivators of the soil, learned in 
mining and the use of various metals, and 
skilled workers in gold and gems.*" Their 
architecture was of some pretentions, 
and they made a good degree of advance 
in arts and in astronomy. The most 
curious fact concerning this science 
among them was its analogy to its de- 
velopment in Eastern Asia, and the 
grouping of years in cycles such as are 
known to the nations in China, Thibet, 
Mongolia, etc.f The Aztecs passed slowly 
from the Northwest ; war, famine, and 
pestilence driving out the earlier inhabit- 
ants of the lands, which they by cautious 
degrees possessed; along the Gila and 
Colorado rivers are seen the vestiges of 
their stations as they marched during 
many generations in a great body to 
Anahuac.J Here was a heaven blessed 
land which none in search of empire could 
pass by. Ramparts of rock, shining lakes, 
fertile soil, luxuriant vegetation, delicious 
climate, were all here to charm the Az- 
tecs ; and here arose the empire of the 
Montezumas, distinguished for, and en- 
cumbered by, innumerable refinements of 
legislation, a singular development indeed 
for this remote people ! Here in the six- 

* Prichard, Nat. Hist, of Man., Vol. II. 
t E. Norris, Royal Asiatic Society. 
I See Prichard's Eastern Origin of Celtic 
Races, Ch. I. 



i S S 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



teenth century were to be found those 
ancient institutions, those religious no- 
tions, that style of building and the 
habits of life which characterized the 
earliest nations of the Old World.* Man 
here recalled the early type, and stood — 
late in the world's last era — what many 
of his brethren had been, so far back as 
the days of Moses. 

Humboldt, after earnest personal re- 
searches in America, declares warmly for 
the Mongolian origin of all the American 
tribes, except the Ugrians of the Polar 
circle. The Ugrians went in a belt of 
territory about the Arctic basin passing 
from west to east. The Mongols went 
from north to south. f The cosmogonies, 
monuments, hieroglyphics and institutions 
of the Americans prove them Asian in 
descent. Their physical conformation, 
habits, and lack of flexibility of organiza- 
tion prove them Mongols, cousins to 
Huns and Kalmuks.J An additional proof 
of this descent lies in their wall-building — 
a peculiarly Mongol trait. 

The Mexicans, like all other American 
tribes, held the creation of the world out 
of chaos, by a good Mind, and of a con- 
tinued conflict for dominion between this 
good Mind — the friend and Maker of men 
— and an evil Mind who was his and their 
enemy. The Mexicans also had tradi- 
tions akin to those of the Hindus, of four 
creations and destructions of the world. 
As India has its four cataclysms, and 
Hesiod writes of the ages of the four 

* A. von Humboldt, Researches i7i Central 
America, Vol. I. 
t Ibid. 
\ Ibid. 



THE CHILDREN OF THE NE W WORLD % 59 



metals, so the Aztec mythology tells of 
four Yongas similar to the four periods of 
the old Etrurians. Thus continually do 
the nations of the earth vindicate their 
common ancestry by their common heir- 
looms of tradition. 

The first cycle of the earth ended in 
famine; all men who did not perish by 
hunger were eaten by tigers. In this age 
were giants, lives of wonderful length, 
enormous monsters, and cyclopean con- 
flicts. The second cycle was closed by 
fire : birds alone escaped the general con- 
flagration ; one man and one woman hid 
in a cave and lived to re-people the earth. 
The third cycle terminated by wind- 
storms. Hurricanes destroyed men and 
beasts ; again two people survived hidden 
in a cave. The last destruction o'f the 
earth was by a deluge, all men and beasts 
were destroyed, except one pair, who 
were saved in a hollow log of cypress-wood* 
The retaining in this tradition of the 
name of the wood whereof Noah's Ark 
was fashioned, is very noteworthy. The 
children of these cypress-saved people 
were all born dumb. When they had in- 
creased in numbers, moved by the fath- 
er's prayer, the gods sent birds to give 
them tongues. The result of the distri- 
bution was that they all spoke a different 
language.f The father who was saved 
from the deluge was called Coxcox. When 
the deluge was subsiding Coxcox sent 
out a vulture for tidings, but the base 
bird remained to batten on the floating 

* Humboldt's Researches in Central America, 
Vol/II.ed. 1814. 

t Prescott's Hist, of Mexico ; Rawlinson's Hist. 
III. o/O. T. 



i6o 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



corpses , a humming-bird did better, and 
brought back a leaf. Coxcox then left 
his boat on a mountain. After this del- 
uge a giant named Xelhua resolved to 
build a hill to touch the sky ; he began a 
brick pyramid, upon which the angry gods 
hurled destroying fire.* Numbers of the 
workmen perished, the building ceased, 
and was dedicated as a temple to the 
god of the air. The Aztecs had anoth- 
er famous tradition — of Quilaztli, the 
Woman of our Flesh, the Mother of All 
Living; she was always represented 
with a serpent beside her in converse. 
This woman was the mother of twin sons, 
who strove furiously about some forgotten 
question. 

The Aztecs offered sacrifices both of 
animals and men ; so did the Peruvians. 
The rites of these empires were burden- 
some and cruel beyond description, and 
their deities were numerous. Some of the 
names of their gods bear a singular like- 
ness to those of the ancient nations of the 
Old World. Votan in name and character 
is like Wodin ; and Bondha is obviously 
Buddha. Now as Wodin or Odin is 
merely Buddha among the Scandinavians, 
we see him again in the Bondha of the 
Mexicans. The Mexicans had cycles and 
a zodiac, like the Tartars and Thibetans. 
The Mexicans worshipped one Supreme 
Being, Master of all gods. To him half a 
century before the conquest a Mexican 
king addressed sixty hymns, f earnest and 
devout in character. This same king 
wrote a poem on the Instability of Hu- 
man Greatness, expressing sentiments 

* Humboldt's Mexico, Vol. I. 
t Ibid. Vol. II., Notes. 



THE CHILDREN OF THE NEW WORLD. 161 



which cannot but fill the reader with sur- 
prise, as coming from the unlimited mon- 
arch of this remote and half barbarous 
land. 

The Mexicans and Peruvians believed 
in the immortality of the soul ; an abode 
of delights and rewards for the spir- 
its of the good, and long ages of toil 
for the souls of the wicked.* They be- 
lieved also in the resurrection of the body, 
and this led them to take special care of 
their dead. 

The Sun was the representative of the 
Chief Divinity and to him innumerable 
temples rose, and horrible altars smoked 
with human sacrifices. But greater than 
the Sun-god was that pervading unknown 
Deity — the " Life-Sustainer of the Uni- 
verse." To him no temple rose, for him 
no altar burned. Too holy to be ap- 
proached by man, he dwelt in and above 
all things. To him the Indian bent his 
head in forest silence, while a mighty awe 
rested on his spirit ; he heard Him, feared 
Him, fled Him, on plain and mountain. 
This was his soul's answer to the voice of 
God speaking within him. 

As the mysterious Toltecs, and the 
races who were their predecessors in the. 
New World's wilds, faded away before the 
children of the Incas and the Montezu- 
mas, these nations have themselves faded 
before the European races. The bee flies 
west and south ; the white man follows 
it, the red man and the bison melt away 
before it. If there yet remain many cent- 
uries to this era of our earth, suns will 
rise and set without finding one single 
descendant of the long exiled Asiatics, 

* Prescott's Hist, of Pent, Vol. I. Ch. III. 
ii 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



the " American Mongolidae "* left within 
the circuit of his rays. 

Says Fontaine : " If a congregation of 
twelve men from Malacca, China, Japan, 
Mongolia, the South Sea Islands, Chili, 
Peru, Brazil, Chickasaws and Comanches 
were dressed alike, or undressed and un- 
shaven, the most skilful anatomist could 
not from their appearance separate 
them." Seward, visiting Alaska, said at 
once " no one can doubt that these tribes 
are Mongolians." Retzius and Hum- 
boldt find the Pacific Coast Indians and 
those of the Islands very closely re- 
lated to the Mongols in Asia, and say 
their skulls bear a strong resemblance to 
those of the Kalmucks. Certain peculiar 
customs, especially of births, circumcis- 
ions and deaths, customs too singular to 
have had spontaneous origin among va- 
rious races not of common stock, point 
to the Asian Mongolians as nearest kin- 
dred to the American Indians. The 
scalp-lock is a curious mark among the 
Japhetic Mongolidae. The Scyth, Mant- 
choos, Chinese, Tatars and old Scandina- 
vians possessed this. Says Byron— 

" Crimson and green are the shawls they wear, 
And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair 
All the rest was shaven and bare." 

The color of the American Indians va- 
ries greatly. The Menonimees of Lake 
Michigan and Green Bay are very light. 
The Mandans are so light they are called 
" White Indians." The Zunis have al- 
ways had among them very many light 
skins with blue eyes and fair hair. We 
quote a paragraph from a leading secular 
journal : 

* Latham's Races of Man. 



THE CHILDREN OF THE NE W WORLD. 163 



"While some British Columbia miners were 
digging recently, they found a number of Chinese 
coins several feet below the surface. Chinamen, 
on inspecting them, pronounced them to be more 
than three thousand years old. There are many 
ethnologists who contend that from Asia, the 
cradle of the human race, two great streams of 
humanity flowed forth, one proceeding westward 
to Europe, and the other eastward to America. 
By such persons the recent discovery will be 
eagerly welcomed. Mr. Seward's visit to Alaska 
confirmed him in his belief that Asiatics were the 
first men to settle upon this continent. Catlin's in- 
vestigations led him to the same conclusion, and 
similar views are entertained by many who have 
studied the history and habits of our aborigines. 
Indians with Mongolian features may be found in 
parts of California. From what is known of the 
Aztecs and Peruvians of the sixteenth century it 
may be inferred that they somewhat resembled 
races living in an atmosphere of ancient Asiatic 
civilization. Their ancestry has been traced to the 
Phoenicians with a fair degree of plausibility. 
Ruins of Central American temples suggest similar 
Asiatic structures. The skill displayed by the 
Iroquois and the Moquis in pottery manufacture 
gives rise to the supposition that they may be of 
Oriental origin. The opinion that the American 
Indians are of Asiatic lineage rests upon a strong 
basis, and future ethnologists may enable it to 
rank among accepted historic facts." 

Dall says that there are the same peo- 
ple in Alaska, the Aleutian Islands and 
the Chukehee Peninsula in Asia. The 
Indians of the Islands call themselves 
" Men of the East," according to Dall 
and Humboldt. Dall, who strongly 
holds " The American idea," and does 
not wish to consider America peopled 
from the Asian Continent, concludes that 
this appellation must mean American. 
But Orientals, or Eastern men, is a name 
held from earliest times by the dwellers 
in Asia, especially east of the Euphrates, 
to designate the stream of migration that 



1 64 BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



set east from Babel. The remotest wan- 
derers from Asia no doubt held to their 
patronymic. The tribes of Eastern Asia 
have a distinct tradition of a migration 
from them over Behring's Straits during 
the present era. But no doubt America 
had two migrations. Many indications 
point to a migration from Phoenicia, 
Northern and Western Africa, and Spain, 
to America, by way of large islands lost 
more than a thousand years before Christ 
by volcanic agencies. South America 
had five cities with names identical with 
cities in Asia Minor and North Africa. 
This could hardly be accidental. On the 
South American monuments are depicted 
bearded men (the Aztec races were beard- 
less) ; also negroes and elephants. Among 
the Mound-Builders also were figures of 
elephants. Basing their speculations on 
the depth at which certain bones have 
been found, many writers demand im- 
mense periods for the peopling of this 
Continent. Without arguing this point, 
we only say that in the West lakes and 
rivers have appeared or disappeared 
within a century.* In twenty-five years a 
hill one hundred feet high entirely disap- 
peared, and in twenty years accumula- 
tions of land by slides, etc., have reached 
a depth of many feet. Since emigration 
west of the Mississippi began the face of 
the country has altered greatly. Four 
hundred years ago this hemisphere was 
unknown. Now one single nation in it 
claims sixty million of souls and vies in 
progress with the Old World. Men ac- 
complish great deeds in little time. 



* Camps i?i the Rockies. 



CHAPTER XII. 



THE REIGN OF THE THREE BROTHERS. 

" The world was all before them, where to choose 
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide : 
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and 
slow, 

Through Eden took their solitary way." 

Many monarchs have passionately de- 
sired a world-kingdom ; a great empire 
dominant from the rising to the going 
down of the sun. Nebuchadnezzar, Cy- 
rus, Alexander, Caesar, and Philip of 
Spain spent their lives to attain this 
which seemed to them the acme of human 
delight, and perished in an agony of dis- 
appointment. 

To one only among men — to Noah, an 
uncrowned, agricultural king — was given 
this empire. The boundaries of his realm 
had never been surveyed ; its resources 
never calculated ; its taxes never levied ; 
its constitution and its laws never pub- 
lished. Cincinnatus left his plough when 
called to his kingdom ; Noah — patriarch 
of monarchs — still tilled the soil. 

How closely also did the three sons of 
Noah cleave to the hills of Armenia, and 
the plain of Shinar!* Some strange ter- 
ror seemed to hedge them in ; the fear of 
separating was stronger than the ambi- 
tion of possessing. It was only when a 
mightier, an unnameable, and inexplica- 



* Josephus, Antiq., Book I. 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



ble terror overwhelmed their souls, filling 
them with a passion for flight, that they 
broke through the invisible rampart built 
about them by their former fears, and by 
their strong social instincts, and fled to 
the four quarters of the earth. 

The thirst for world-empire appears 
first to have developed in Nimrod. Real- 
izing that the families of men must soon 
spread abroad on account of their num- 
bers, and beholding the beginning of that 
movement in the passing of many Shem- 
ite families into Ur, he determined to 
have some mighty central citadel, altar of 
worship, throne of the kingdom, home of 
the national fathers, a point of union and 
return for all the scattered forces of men.* 
How narrow and limited was this plan 
whereon Nimrod prided himself, com- 
pared with the wonderful, perfect, and 
far-reaching plan of God for peopling the 
earth. When the fiat of Dispersion went 
forth, men departed in various lines from 
the Shinar-centre. They went not by 
mutual consent, by choice, nor by chance : 
God led the Dispersion of the sons of 
men, just as surely as he led the children 
of Israel by the cloud, and by the pillar 
of fire. The instinct, the subtle rapport 
between their souls and their proper 
abode was his finger directing their 
way.f 

Shem was to be the fixed element in 
history : toward the climax of the She- 
mitic line in Christ, all the world was to 
look for two thousand years backward to 
this Light of the World, all eyes were to 
turn, in all the generations to come. 

* Kurtz, History of the Old Covenant, Vol. I. 
t Ibid. 



REIGN OF THE THREE BRO THERS. 1 67 



Therefore Shem, the central point in his- 
tory, was to keep his place in a central 
position in the earth ; he was not to have 
long periods of disappearance like Japheth, 
nor to wander and be lost, like Ham ; 
Shem was to " dwell in the presence of his 
brethren " ; the place of his tent was ever 
to be known. Shem was to have numer- 
ically a comparatively small increase; 
small territory would therefore suffice 
him. To him were committed the holy 
oracles, he was the schoolmaster of his 
brethren in religion and letters. The 
illustrious sons of Shem were to be few 
in number, but among them were to be 
Moses, Solomon, St. Paul. Shem's writ- 
ings would not be extensive ; yet in the 
Bible they were to cover every domain of 
letters — science, history, poetry, biogra- 
phy, law, philosophy, and in their perfec- 
tion to be the unequalled crown of litera- 
ture. Let us look then collectively at 
the tents of Shem: He goes, in Elam, 
southeast as far as the Persian Sea. He 
turns north in Asshur, and reaches the 
fountains of the Tigris. Thence travelling 
westward through Asia Minor, he rests 
upon the Caspian. In the Hebrews he 
has Palestine for a possession ; in Joktan 
the sunny sweep of the Arabian Peninsu- 
la. But lest we think that the command 
to wander did not come to the Shemites, 
we find two wide-wanderers in this family. 
Lud, who had rested awhile in the Arme- 
nian mountains, suddenly leaves his 
home. We hear the feet of his steeds 
thundering along the Jordan valley and 
over the Isthmus of Suez. The dust of 
the desert rises like a cloud around his 
flying battalions. He makes his camp in 



1 68 BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



Barca, he waters his caravans at every 
oasis. He enters the Canaries. As the 
ages have passed, his host has dwindled 
to a handful ; but he has written his 
story on all Northern Africa, and im- 
pressed his language, and his customs on 
his Hamitic cousins. 

Aram was the other wanderer of Shem. 
From him came the Phoenicians. Around 
the whole basin of the Mediterranean 
they set up their trading stations, they 
passed the Pillars of Hercules ; found the 
islands of Britain, and thence they brought 
tin.* They too have perished. Outside 
of these limits we find no wanderings 
of Shem, except where his blood has 
mixed with that of Japheth in the ming- 
ling of Persians with Medes, and has in 
this mixed race, moved eastward. 

Ham had a wider empire ; hot south- 
ern suns suited his blood ; a warm land, 
where food would grow with small cult- 
ure ; where easily-built habitations would 
suffice; lands where there would be but few 
stimulants to lofty achievements pleased 
the majority of the race of Ham. But 
there were in this race widely differing 
capacities, and they had an inheritance 
where all their possibilities could be de- 
veloped. There were traders among the 
Hamites, and they shared Arabia with 
Shem. There were builders of rare gen- 
ius, and they received Egypt, the land of 

* The Phoenician alphabet and language are 
said to have closest affinities among the Basques 
of Southeast Europe, and the Mayas' of Yucatan. 
These Mayas have a tradition that their language 
and writing came in ships from far. Some ethnol- 
ogists consider the Basques Phoenicians, and mark 
also as Phoenician descendants the peculiar fami- 
lies of fishers at Newhaven near Edinburgh. 



REIGN OF THE THREE BRO THERS. 1 69 



architecture. There was ability for world- 
rule ; it was displayed in Babylon. Thus 
we see Ham getting the first kingdom of 
Chaldea, part of Arabia, nearly all of Af- 
rica — Aram having a hold on the coast, 
and Lud an interior line. 

But we find the Hamites also in Pales- 
tine, until they are blotted out by the 
Hebrews; and then there is yet another 
colony whose history can never be writ- 
ten. Obscure glimpses come to us of 
those Cushites who departed from Baby- 
lonia, went eastward, entered India, were 
pressed downward into Malacca by the 
advancing Japetidae. We see these for- 
lorn ones of Cush borne on the forefront 
of the Malayan wave as it rolled over the 
Polynesian Islands, becoming the dark 
tribes of the Archipelagoes. The lightest 
hued of the Hamitic races, the Libyans, 
also were sprinkled along the Mediterra- 
nean Islands, and mingled with the Ibe- 
rians on the European coast of the Great 
Sea.* 

It was the fortune of Japheth to re- 
ceive all that his two brothers had left. 
He was especially adapted for the Tem- 
perate Zone; but was capable of accom- 
modating himself to all climates, and to 
all methods of life. Japheth therefore 
has possession of Europe, of at least seven- 
ninths of Asia, and of the whole of 
America, with nine-tenths of the islands. 
Africa alone afforded him no inheritance.f 
Japheth had three great resting places — 
Media, Greece and India. After his first 

* See Prichard's Nat. Hist, of Man., Vol. I. 
Ch. X. 

t See Keil, and Delitzsch, Com. on Old Test., 
Art. Desce?idants of Japheth. 



170 



BRICKS FROM BABEL. 



flight at Babel, he had two other grand 
points of departure, Iran — whence the 
term Aryan — for so many of his families, 
and the Altai Mountains,* whence con- 
stant streams of population flowed for 
ages into the Asian plains, and thence 
into America and Polynesia. 

We find that immediately upon the 
Dispersion, Japheth's son, Javan, took 
his way toward Greece. In Magog the 
Scythians were established in the north ; 
and Madai occupied Media. But ages 
were destined to elapse before the Ja- 
petidse were even comparatively settled 
in their homes ; wave after wave of 
migration rolled forward, and receded. 
At length we find the earliest tribes ab- 
sorbed in nations of a later growth ; the 
broad band of the Indo-European fam- 
ilies, lying across the North Temperate 
Zone in the Old World ; the Ugrians, 
wandering around the pole ; the Mon- 
golians in America, dying slowly before a 
late emigration of Europeans coming 
over the Atlantic ; the Malayans of 
Oceanica, pursued by their happier breth- 
ren, who bring them the light of life. 

The reign of Ham was brief, tumultu- 
ous, an agony of the world. Egypt, 
Ethiopia, Babylonia perished, — and the 
reign of Ham was ended. 

The sceptre of Shem was extended 
rather over a spiritual and invisible, than 
over an earthly kingdom. Solomon in 
his -highest glory was rather a master of 
wise men, than of monarchs ; the kings 
of the earth were his allies, not his vas- 
sals. The reign of Shem has been the 

* Bunsen's Philosophy of U?iiversal History, 
Vol. II.; Origin of Language. 



REIGN OF THE THREE BR O THERS. 1 7 J 



royalty of Mind, his Scriptures have 
moulded the development of the nations; 
the world dates its age to and from the 
days of the Son of David. Thus Shem 
has ruled in hearts and brains, and crown- 
ingly in his Divine Descendant, who is 
King of kings, and Lord of lords. 

When Ham had yielded to failure, and 
Shem had fulfilled his primary destiny, 
the empire was given to the second son 
of Noah. Japheth obtained good things 
by waiting. We behold the marvels of 
Japheth, marvels suited to the length of 
his dominion, the vast extent of his terri- 
tory, and the unnumbered multitudes of 
his children ; we admire his inventions, 
his successes, his learning, his careful 
mingling of utility and beauty. We tri- 
umph in Japheth, and yet we feel that 
the real age of his glory lies before him. 
How much of the earth's surface has he 
really put under the plough ? How many 
mysteries has he yet to solve? How 
far has he subdued the elements? How 
thoroughly does he understand the world 
he rules? How many of her treasures 
are yet locked in secret places? How 
much still goes to waste of that which 
should be utilized ? 

Is there not a day to come, when Ja- 
pheth shall do yet better than in his past? 
when Ham shall retrieve his disasters ? 
when Shem shall reach shining heights 
yet untrodden ? and a long and glorious 
destiny shall stretch before the three sons 
of Noah ? 



) 



APPENDICES. 



I. The Hittites. 

As lately as fifteen and twenty years 
ago, writers on ancient history and eth- 
nology indulged in sneers concerning 
" Bible inaccuracies in regard to the 
Hittites." Objection 1st was, that the 
Bible enumerated them as Hamitic ; i.e., 
Ham, Canaan, Heth, that is the Hittites. 
— 2. The empire assigned to them was 
far greater in extent, than they could 
have possessed ; — 3. Moses represented 
them as more powerful than they could 
ever have been. — 4. Semitic names were 
given to them in the Scripture. 

A broad light has recently been thrown 
on the history of the ancient Hittites. 
First, from Egyptian Inscriptions ; Sec- 
ond, from Assyrian Inscriptions ; Third, 
from the very late discovery of Hittite 
Inscriptions, at Hamath, Tyana, Karabel, 
and Jerabis.* The Biblical statements 
concerning the Hittites are, that they 
were Hamites ; that when Abraham went 
into Palestine they were settled in that 
country, the leading people there, and 
occupying with their cognate tribes the 

* See Egypt under the Pharaohs, by Burgsch ; 
Transactions of the Society of Biblical Arch ecol- 
ogy r The Empire of the Hittites, by Wm. Wright ; 
The Alphabet, by Isaac Taylor. 



74 



APPENDICES. 



country from the Nile to the Euphrates. 
They had Hebron and what was later 
Jerusalem, among their cities. Abraham 
bought his burial cave from Ephron, a 
Hittite : Esau married two Hittite 
women, daughters of Beeri and Elon. 
The Hittites, when Israel came out of 
Egypt, were very warlike people, famous 
for war-horses and chariots, three fighting 
men in each chariot. Uriah, one of Da- 
vid's chief captains, was a Hittite, so was 
his friend Abimelech. The Hittites were 
by preference and habit a mountain peo- 
ple, had weights, measures and money, in 
the time of Abraham, and as late as Solo- 
mon's time* chariots were brought out of 
Egypt for " the kings of the Hittites," 
and later still, at the siege of Samaria, 
when a supposed noise of chariots was 
heard, the Syrians fled, saying — " The 
king of Israel hath hired against us the 
kings of the Hittites." 

The explanation of the Semitic names 
given in Scripture to the Hittites, is very 
easy. In Oriental lands, a name is usu- 
ally translated into the language of a 
country where a man goes to live. Thus, 
the Egyptian going to Persia would re- 
ceive a Persian name, from his new 
friends ; or, the Russian going to Da- 
mascus, would get a Syrian name. So, 
too, names change with the circumstances 
of life ; thus the Hamitic Hittite names, 
unpronounceable to the Semites, were, in 
their daily life, changed to Semitic titles, 
and when a Hittite exile became David's 
favorite, he was very naturally named 
" the friend of the king," i.e. r Abimelech. 
* See 2 Kings, vii. 6 ; I Kings, xi. i ; x. 29. 



APPENDICES. 



175 



The Assyrian records first mention the 
Hittites as strong rivals of Babylon, 13 
years before Abraham bought his cave. 
The Assyrian records tell us that 1900 
B.C. the Hittites, having arts and civiliza- 
tion, had Carchemish for capital, on the 
upper Euphrates ; for great city, Kadesh 
on the Orontes, and all the region south 
of Hamah to Euphrates in possession. 
The Assyrian tablets show that they 
were a very strong, numerous, heroic 
people, fighting in chariots, living in splen- 
dor. For their luxuries they went to 
Egypt, and so naturally had traders, like 
Ephron, as well as warriors. The Egyp- 
tian Inscriptions show that the Hittites 
had towns, palaces, armies, territories, 
close to Egypt ; that they built Hebron, 
and Zoan * (Tanais), and that one of the 
hated conquering Shepherd, or Hyksos, 
dynasties of Egypt was Hittite.f Dr. 
Schliemann finds from monuments at 
Troy — and the Hittite monuments, scat- 
tered over Asia Minor confirm — that their 
empire went west as far as Smyrna. The 
Egyptian records further state, that two 
of the greatest Pharaohs married daugh- 
ters of Hittite kings, i.e., Rameses II. 
(Sesostris) (whose daughter rescued Moses) 
and Rameses III. David and Solomon 
also had Hittite wives. The song of 
Pentaur, court poet of Rameses II., is on 
the Temples of Luxor, Karnak and Aby- 
dos, and on a roll of papyrus in the 
British Museum. That song tells how 
countless hosts of Hittites in chariots 
fought near Kadesh, with Rameses, and 

* Numbers, xiii. 22. 

t Mariette ; The Alphabet, by Isaac Taylor, 
Vol. II. p. 121. 



176 



APPENDICES. 



after the battle a treaty of peace was 
made. The text was written by the Hit- 
tites, on a great shield or plate of silver. 
The treaty was in the name of the Kheta 
(Hittites) and Egyptians, the Kheta placed 
first : it recognized the gods of Kheta, and 
Egypt, and had an extradition clause and 
stipulations for mercy to political offend- 
ers ! ! The king of Kheta is called " the 
great king," his daughter is declared an 
" inconceivable beauty," and the Hittite 
King himself, in his national dress, took 
her to Egypt to wed Pharaoh. The 
Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions of Ke- 
lah-Shergat, of Tiglath Pileser I., chron- 
icle numerous wars with Hittites ; the 
capture of 120 chariots with horses, in 
one battle, also of swift horses, chariots, 
silver, oxen, sheep and " utensils whose 
beauty could not be comprehended." 
He tells also of tribute of ''silver, tin, 
gold, copper." Four hundred years the 
Hittites struggled with Assyria for su- 
premacy in the East. The records of 
Assur-Nasir-Pal, of Nineveh, 883-53 B - c -> 
tell of wars with the Hittites, of capture of 
warriors, horses, sheep, oxen, furniture, 
chariots of war. Shalmaneser crossed 
the Euphrates over eleven times to fight 
the Hittites, and took " twelve kings of 
the Hittites." The Hittite power was 
finally overthrown by Sargon, King of 
Assyria, 721-17 B.C., at Carchemish.* 
The records scattered through Syria, 
Cyprus, Asia Minor, show us that the 
Hittites dealt in earliest times with the 
Lydians, had " current money " for trade, 
a recognized form of sale or conveyanc- 
ing, standard weight, (the Hittite mina 
* Oppert, Records of the Past, VII. 31. 



APPENDICES. 



177 



was long the standard of weight in Asia 
Minor,) and a written tongue. Their 
inscriptions were generally excised, not 
incised. The mural crown, and the two- 
headed eagle, afterwards carried by the 
Saracens, and by the Crusaders given as 
an emblem to Germany, were Hittite. 
Says Dr. Taylor, " These Hittites were 
one of the most powerful people of the 
primeval world ; they possessed art, cult- 
ure, script." They were among the 
most literary of ancient peoples. 

George Smith conjectured that after 
the age of Joshua, many Hittites passed 
down the Mediterranean coast, along the 
North coast of Africa, into Italy, and be- 
came ancestors of the Etruscans. If the 
unread remains of the Etruscans can now 
be deciphered, with the Jerabis and Ha- 
math stones, another of the old-time 
riddles will be solved. The Hittite Em- 
pire probably endured about 1200 years. 

II. The Celts. 

In Ireland. — Certain ancient bardic 
relics of Hibernia are called the Annals 
of The Four Masters. These report 
successive settlements ; 1st, Macedonian 
Greek. 2d, Apparently Phoenician. 3d, 
From Belgic Gaul. 4th, Milesian. 

The history of the Milesian immigra- 
tion is in a poem of date 884 A.D., which 
contains much Scripture story widely 
intermixed with race tradition. It insists, 
however, upon a delay in Galatia, whence 
the Milesian migration proceeded to 
Spain, and then to Ireland. Finally the 
Picts rushed into Ireland before they 
entered Britain. Probably none of the 



i 7 8 



APPENDICES. 



earliest settlers in these remote regions — 
regions remote from the " Cradle Lands " 
— were of unmixed blood. The Celtic 
stock would very likely have received 
ingraftings of Slavonic and Teutonic, 
during the lengthened and interrupted 
journey north-west through Europe. 
(See Bede's Eccl. Hist.; Haverty's Hist, 
of Ireland, etc., etc.) 

In Scotland. — The second migration 
into Scotland was Celtic. These Celts, 
or Kelts, a people of rounder skulls than 
their predecessors, were divided into two 
great branches. The first branch occu- 
pied the interior of Scotland, were fair- 
skinned, large-limbed, red-haired, were 
considered an indigenous people by the 
Romans, and named Picts or painted folk. 
The other branch of Celts, having more 
slender bodies and darker hair, were 
those called Milesian in Ireland, and after 
the beginning of the 4th century, were 
denominated Scots. These Celts were 
followed by Teutons from the Rhine to 
the Cimbric Chersonesus, and were later 
called Saxons. (See Skene, Celtic Scot- 
land, Vol. I.; Brown, History of The 
Highlands, Vol. I. The preliminary dis- 
sertation of this History is very fine.) 

III. The Iberians. 

In all Western Europe the Iberians 
appear to have been the predecessors of 
the Celts. Many writers report the 
Iberians the earliest inhabitants of West- 
ern Europe. Southern France, Northern 
Italy, Spain, Ireland, Wales, England, 
Scotland bear traces of this primitive 
people, finally absorbed or driven out by 



APPENDICES. 



179 



the hosts of the Celts, though as has been 
previously said, in some localities the 
stock remains, retaining its distinguishing 
characters even to the present day, as in 
the Basque Provinces. In considering 
the progress of the early migrations we 
must consider the influence that climate 
would have in delaying a journey, and 
barriers of mountains like the Alps and 
the Pyrenees in deflecting a line of march. 

IV. The Polynesians. 

Judge Fornander, a student of ethnol- 
ogy, in a work on the Polynesian race 
proves — I. That the Polynesian race 
can be traced directly to the Asiatic 
Archipelago ; 2. Into India and the 
Aryan plain ; 3. That they have marks of 
a Cushite-Sabean civilization and religion. 
This ethnologist, who lived many years 
in Hawaii, traced the early pilgrimage of 
the Polynesians from the Asian mainland, 
by following up their names for places of 
abode, as islands, mountains, plains, etc. 
He says : " Were every other trace of a 
people's descent obliterated, the identity 
of the nomenclature of its places of 
abode would still remain an a priori evi- 
dence of the habitat of an absorbed or 
forgotten people." Not only the nomen- 
clature of the Polynesians indicates their 
origin, but their folk-lore, and their social 
phenomena declare the same ancestry 
and line of migration. He says the Poly- 
nesian family can " be traced through the 
Asiatic Archipelago, up through the 
Deccan, north of the Persian Gulf ; and, 
where all other traces fail, language still 
points back and north, to an Aryan 



So 



APPENDICES. 



stock. . . . For long ages the Polynesian 
family was the recipient of a Cushite 
civilization which almost obscured its own 
consciousness of Aryan stock." " Glimp- 
ses of Cushite worship, Hindu myths, Ira- 
nian coloring, a language fundamentally 
Aryan, all these cumulative evidences of a 
many-sided extraction beyond the Asian 
Archipelago, meet us at every step." 

Among the mass of Polynesian legends, 
we will refer to but four which bear that 
" broad arrow " of a common origin of 
humanity : 

1. The Cain and Abel tradition: The 
first of the gods had two sons, the elder 
was evil, the younger good. Jealousy 
moved the elder to kill the younger ; then 
the god cursed the elder, and sent him to 
the East, outcast forever ; yet, lest he be 
too much overwhelmed, he was allowed to 
associate occasionally with his brother's 
family, for purposes of trade. 

2. The rainbow legend : Nunu went 
out to offer to his god flesh and fruit. 
Seduced by the glory of the moon in 
heaven, he took that for the god, and be- 
came a moon-worshipper. Wrath filled 
the divine mind, and he came down to 
punish Nunu; but Nunu asked pardon, 
and the god, forgiving him, left the rain- 
bow as a token of his amity. 

3. The flood legend : This among the 
Hawaiian Islands is very full and minute : 
The wrath of the Lord ; the big ship or 
bowl ; the animals and their food saved ; 
the animals brought in by pairs ; the 
birds sent out ; the leaf brought back ; the 
seven days' waiting after the saved family 
are shut in — all are noted in this curious 
legend, which is in rhythmic form chanted 



APPENDICES. 



181 



by the people in their many-vowelled 
tongue, to a low mournful strain of few 
notes. This legend of the flood agrees 
with the Babylonian or early Chaldean, 
in saying that Noah sacrificed when he 
entered the ark as well as when he left it : 
also it declares that he buried written 
tablets of the pre-diluvian history of the 
world. 

4. The tower legend : This declares 
that the Polynesians long ago built a 
vast tower to read the stars and to know 
if the moon were inhabited. It rose sky- 
ward, the people crowded in, all busy in 
building, when the foundations broke 
asunder, and flung the people far and 
wide over all the islands of Fiji. It is 
proper to note that this legend is found 
in the Fiji group. 

There are also chart legends of the 
Creation and the Fall. Circumcision, 
tattooing, tabic, holy water, and cities of 
refuge, all hint at the Mesopotamian origin 
of the Polynesians. 



THE END. 



Bricks from Babel: 

Wright Julia McNair, 1840-1903 

9684450 

The Library of Congress 

[61] bricksfrombabelOOwrig 

0013652320A 
Oct 29, 2013 



